Hanging Hill (2 page)

2

At the police station, just two miles away in central Bath, Lorne Wood was all anyone could talk about. A sixteen-year-old pupil of a local private school, Faulkener’s, she was popular – and fairly reliable, according to her parents. From the get-go, Sally’s sister, Detective Inspector Zoë Benedict, hadn’t had even a speck of confidence that Lorne would be seen alive again. Maybe that was just Zoë – too pragmatic by far – but at two o’clock that afternoon, when one of the search team beating the undergrowth next to the Kennet and Avon canal found a body, she wasn’t in the slightest surprised.

‘Not that I’d ever say “I told you so”,’ she murmured to DI Ben Parris, as they walked along the towpath. She kept her hands shoved in the pockets of the black jeans the superintendent was always telling her she shouldn’t wear as a warranted officer with a duty to the image of the force. ‘You’d never hear those words come out of my mouth.’

‘Of course not.’ He didn’t take his eyes off the group of people up ahead. ‘It wouldn’t be in your nature.’

The site had already been cordoned off, with portable screens fixed in place across the path. Hovering outside the screen were ten or twelve people – barge owners, mostly, and already a member of the press, dressed in a black waterproof. As the two DIs pushed their way through, warrant cards held up, he raised his Nikon and fired off a few shots. He was a sure sign that word was getting out faster than the police could keep up with, thought Zoë.

An area of nearly two thousand square metres had been cordoned off, away from the eyes of the public. The path was loose, chalky gravel giving way on one side to the bulrushes of the canal, on the other to a tangle of undergrowth – cow parsley, nettles and grass. Officers had left a gap of about fifty metres between the screens and the inner cordon, limited by police tape. Thirty metres or so past that, in a part of the undergrowth that formed a natural tunnel, stood a white tent.

Zoë and Ben pulled on white forensic suits, tightened the hoods, and added gloves. They ducked into the tent. The air inside was warm and packed with the scents of crushed grass and earth, the ground crisscrossed with lightweight aluminium tread plates.

‘It’s her.’ The crime-scene manager stood a foot inside, making notes on a clipboard. He didn’t look up at them. ‘No doubt. Lorne Wood.’

Behind him at the end of a walkway the crime-scene photographer was circling a muddy tarpaulin, taking video.

‘The tarp’s the type they use to cover firewood on the barges. But no one on this stretch of canal is missing one. The guy threw it over her. To look at her you’d think she was in bed.’

He was right. Lorne was lying on her back, as if asleep, one arm resting on top of the tarp, which was pulled up to her chest like a duvet. Her head was lolling to one side, turned up and away from the tent entrance. Zoë couldn’t see her face, but she could see the T-shirt. Grey – with ‘I am Banksy’ across the chest. The one Lorne had been wearing when she’d left her house yesterday afternoon. ‘What time was she reported missing?’

‘Eight,’ said Ben. ‘She was supposed to be on her way home.’

‘We’ve found her keys,’ said the CSM, ‘but still no phone. There’s a dive team coming to search the canal later.’

In the corner of the tent a technician dropped a pair of black ballet pumps into a bag. He put a red flag in the ground, then sealed the bag and signed across the seal. ‘Was that where they were found?’ she asked him.

He nodded. ‘Right there. Both of them.’

‘Kicked off? Pulled off?’

‘Taken off. They were like this.’ The CSM held out his hands, straight and neatly together. ‘Just placed there.’

‘Is that mud on them?’

‘Yes. But not from here. From the towpath somewhere.’

‘And this grass – the way it’s been flattened?’

‘The struggle.’

‘It’s not much,’ she said.

‘No. Seems to have been over quickly.’

The photographer had finished videoing. He stepped back to allow Zoë and Ben to approach the body. The tread plates divided into two directions at the foot of the tarpaulin and circled the body. Zoë and Ben went carefully, taking the side that led to Lorne’s face. They stood for a long time in silence, looking down at her. They’d both been working in CID for more than a decade and in that time they’d dealt with just a handful of murders. Nothing like this.

Zoë looked up at the CSM. She could feel her eyes wanting to water. ‘What’s made her face go like that?’

‘We’re not sure. We think it’s a tennis ball between her teeth.’

‘Christ,’ said Ben. ‘Christ.’

The CSM was right: a piece of duct tape had been placed across Lorne’s mouth. It was holding in place a spherical object that had been jammed inside as far as it would go, luminous green tufts visible at the top and bottom. It had forced her jaw open so wide she seemed to be snarling or screaming. Her nose was squashed into a bloodied clot, her eyes were screwed up tight. There was more blood in her hair. Two distinct lines of it ran from under the duct tape down to her jaw – almost in the places the jaw of a ventriloquist’s dummy would be hinged, except that they met her jaw almost under her ears. She must have been lying on her back when the bleeding had happened.

‘Where’s it coming from?’

‘Her mouth.’

‘She’s bitten her tongue?’

The CSM shrugged. ‘Or maybe the skin’s split.’

‘
Split?
’

He touched the corners of his mouth. ‘A tennis ball forced into her mouth? It would put strain on the skin here.’

‘Skin can’t spl—’ she began, but then she remembered that skin
could
split. She’d seen it on the backs and faces of suicide victims who’d jumped from high buildings. The impact often split their skin. The thought put a cold weight in her stomach.

‘Have you pulled back the tarp?’ Ben was leaning over, trying to peer under the tarpaulin. ‘Can we see?’

‘The pathologist’s asked no one else to touch it – asked that you come to the PM. He – I— Both of us want her down to the mortuary just as she is. Tarp and all.’

‘So, I’m guessing there’s a sexual element?’

The CSM sniffed. ‘Yes. You can definitely say there is. A strong sexual element.’

‘Well?’ Ben checked his watch and turned to Zoë. ‘What do you want to do?’

She dragged her eyes away from Lorne’s face and watched the officer on the other side of the tent label the bag with the shoes in it. ‘I think …’ she murmured ‘… I think I want to take a walk.’

3

For a while Lorne Wood had been part of Millie and Sophie’s little group – but then, about a year ago, she had seemed to grow apart from the other girls. Maybe they hadn’t had that much in common to begin with – she had been at a different school, was a year older and always struck Sally as more sophisticated. She was the prettiest of them all and she seemed to know it. A blonde with milky skin and classic blue eyes. A true beauty.

That lunchtime the teenagers gathered around the computer in Isabelle’s study, trying to get all the gossip they could, trying to piece together what had happened from Facebook and Twitter. There wasn’t much news – the police hadn’t made any public statements since the one they’d issued this morning, confirming she was missing. It seemed Lorne had last been seen by her mother yesterday afternoon when she’d headed into town, on foot, for a shopping expedition. Her Facebook page hadn’t been updated in that time and no calls had been made on her mobile: apparently, when her parents had rung, the phone was switched off.

‘It could just be a tiff,’ Isabelle said, when the kids had gone back outside. ‘Fed up with her parents, run off with a boyfriend. I did it when I was that age – teach your parents a lesson, that sort of thing.’

‘Probably,’ agreed Sally. ‘Maybe.’

It was nearly one thirty. Time to get going. She began to pack up her things, thinking about Lorne. She’d met her only a handful of times, but she recalled her as a determined girl, with a slightly sad air. She remembered sitting in the garden with her one day, when she and Millie were still living with Julian in Sion Road, and Lorne saying, quite out of the blue, ‘Millie’s so lucky. You know – for it to be just her.’

‘Just her?’

‘No brothers or sisters.’

That had come as a surprise to Sally. ‘I thought you got on with your brother.’

‘Not really.’

‘Isn’t he kind to you?’

‘Oh, yes, he’s very kind. He’s kind. And he’s nice. And he’s clever.’ She pushed her hair away from her pretty face. ‘He’s perfect. Does
everything
Mum and Dad want. That’s what I mean. Millie’s lucky.’

It had stuck in Sally’s mind, that exchange, and it came back to her now as clearly as if it had happened yesterday. She’d never heard anyone say it was a disadvantage to have a brother or a sister before. Maybe people thought it, but she’d never heard anyone actually voice it.

‘I wish they wouldn’t do that.’ Sally looked up. Isabelle was standing in the window, frowning out at the garden. ‘I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve told them.’

Sally got up and joined her. The garden was long, planted with fruit trees and surrounded by huge poplars that rustled and bent when so much as a breath of wind came through. ‘Where are they all?’

Isabelle pointed. ‘See? At the end. Sitting on the stile. I know what they’re thinking.’

‘Do you?’

‘Oh, yes. Pollock’s Farm. They’re wondering if they can get down there before we notice.’

Isabelle’s house was a mile to the north of Bath on the escarpment where the steep slopes of Lansdown levelled out. To the north-west were the lowlands and the golf courses; to the east, and butting up to Isabelle’s garden, was Pollock’s Farm. It had been derelict for three years since the owner, old man Pollock, had gone mad and had started, so people said, drinking sheep dip. The crops stood dead in the field, weed-choked; dead brown maize heads drooped on their stems. Half-dismantled machinery rusted along the tracks, pig troughs filled with stagnant rainwater, and the decomposing pyramids of silage had been broken into by rats and gnawed until they seemed like the crumbling ruins of a forgotten civilization. The place was notoriously dangerous – not just for the hazards in the fields, but for the way the land stopped abruptly in the middle, interrupted by an ancient quarry that had cut a steep drop into the hillside. The farmhouse was at the bottom of the quarry – you could stand in the top fields and look down through the trees on to its roof. It was where old man Pollock had died – in his armchair in front of the television. He’d sat there for months, while the seasons changed, the house decayed and the electricity was turned off, until he’d been discovered by a meths addict searching for privacy.

‘The boys are worse since that happened. Honestly, it’s like a magnet to them. They gee each other up. They just love frightening themselves, daring each other.’ Isabelle sighed, turned away from the window and went back to the cooker where the treacle tart was cooling on a rack. ‘It doesn’t matter what I say. They pretend they don’t but I know they still go there. Or if not them, then someone. I went down there about a month ago – and it’s awful. The place is littered with crisp packets, cider bottles, every disgusting thing you could imagine. It won’t be long before one of them steps on a syringe. I found a beer can in Nial’s bin the other day and I don’t trust Peter. I’ve seen scabs around his mouth. Do you know what that means?’

‘No.’

‘I don’t either. I suppose I automatically thought drugs. Maybe I should tell his mother – who knows? Anyway – that place.’ She gestured at the window. ‘It doesn’t help at all. The sooner the probate is sorted and they’ve sold it the better. I’ve told the gardener over and over again to close the stile off – but he just won’t get round to it. They’re at this age and you can’t help thinking …’

She gave a little shiver. Her eyes went briefly to Sally’s bag. Perhaps thinking about Millie’s face on the tarot. Or maybe Lorne Wood. Missing for sixteen hours. Then her expression cleared. ‘Don’t worry,’ she said. ‘I’ll keep an eye on her. I’ll run her over to Julian’s at six. There’s absolutely nothing for you to worry about.’

4

It had been Lorne Wood’s habit that spring to go shopping in town, then walk home, taking a route through Sydney Gardens, then out on to the towpath where her house was – about half a mile to the east. Sydney Gardens was the oldest park in Bath, famous for its replica Roman temple of Minerva. It was also notorious for cottagers – you only had to step one pace off the path to see a young man, nicely dressed, standing sheepishly in the bushes, a hopeful smile on his face. Parents frog-marched their children past the vicinity of the toilets, talking loudly to distract their attention, and dog-walkers regularly came to the local vets with dogs choking on used condoms scavenged from the undergrowth. A railway line ran through the park – police teams had thoroughly searched it already, as it wasn’t unknown for bodies to be pulverized and scattered by a speeding train to the point at which they seemed to have disappeared altogether. Now, however, the search teams weren’t looking for a body. They were looking for clues about Lorne’s journey from town to the place she’d been killed.

Zoë and Ben walked down the canal path not speaking. From time to time one of them would stop and peer into the bushes on the right, or down into the impenetrable canal water, hoping to catch sight of something significant that the teams had missed. About a quarter of a mile back into town Zoë stopped at a small gate in a wall. The woody branches of a wisteria hung over it, the pendulous purple racemes just beginning to open. The gate led into Sydney Gardens. It was probably the place Lorne had got on to the towpath. Zoë and Ben stood opposite each other, faces lowered, considering the patch of mud between their feet.

‘Is it what was on her shoes?’ he asked.

‘It’s the same colour.’

Ben raised his head and scanned the path – the puddles that straddled the gravel. It had rained yesterday, but the sun was drying it now. ‘A lot of places in Bath have mud this colour. It’s the limestone in the earth.’

Zoë eyed the puddles. She was thinking about the shoes. Ballet pumps. Unsuitable for walking, really, but all the girls wore them these days.

Ben put his hands in his pockets and squinted up at the sky. ‘So?’ he said quietly. ‘What do you think’s under that tarp?’

‘Christ knows.’

‘Boss?’ DC Goods, one of the team, was coming along the path towards them, waving to attract their attention. ‘I’ve got a woman wants to speak to you.’

‘A woman?’

‘One of the live-aboards. Some of the owners got a good view of the crime scene before it was cordoned. They got the lie of the land. This one saw the body – just a glimpse. She’s got something she wants to tell you.’

‘Great.’ Zoë set off down the path at a pace, Ben a few steps behind her. Her head was buzzing. It would be really nice –
really
nice – to tuck a solved murder into her portfolio. Be able to stand up in front of the force and Lorne Wood’s family and say she’d found the killer. The person who’d shoved a tennis ball into their daughter’s mouth. And done God only knew what else to her.

The barge wasn’t far from the park – at least a quarter of a mile from the crime scene. It was brightly painted, with flowers daubed all over the cabin, the name
Elfwood
carved across the stern. On the roof, next to the little chimney, were piled provisions – coal, wood, water bottles, a bicycle. Ben rapped twice on the roof, then jumped on to the aft deck and bent to look down into the cabin. ‘Hello?’

‘I’m here,’ said a voice. ‘Come in.’

He and Zoë went down the steps, bending their necks to avoid the low ceiling. It was like going into Aladdin’s cave – every surface, the ceiling, the walls, the cupboards, had been adorned with wooden sculptures of tree nymphs. The windows were hung with glittering cheesecloth in shades of purple and pink, and everything smelt of cats and patchouli oil. Not much sunlight filtered through, just enough for them to make out a woman of about fifty, with very long curly hennaed hair, perched on one of the bulkhead seats, a roll-up cigarette in her hand. She wore a circlet of flowers in her hair and a huge velvet cape that fastened at the neck and was open to reveal a lace blouse and a skirt with tiny gold mirrors stitched on it. Her bare legs and feet, crammed into rubber-soled sandals, were very white. Like the jars of duck fat you saw lined up when the French market came to Bath in the summer.

‘Good.’ She took a long draw on the cigarette. ‘Nice to see the police doing something worthwhile instead of busting the innocent.’

‘I’m DI Benedict.’ Zoë put her hand out. ‘Pleased to meet you.’

The woman put the cigarette into her mouth and shook the hand. She peered at Zoë through the smoke, getting the measure of her. After a moment or two she seemed satisfied. ‘Amy,’ she said. ‘And him? Who’s he?’

‘DI Ben Parris.’ Ben offered his hand.

Amy shook it, eyeing him suspiciously. Then she took the cigarette out of her mouth and motioned for them to sit down. ‘No tea – generator died on me two weeks ago, and you really don’t want to see me doing my thing with the Primus stove.’

‘That’s OK. We won’t be long.’ Zoë pulled out her pocketbook. After all these years, with all the technology available, the force still liked everything noted in handwriting. Even so, she usually backed it up by recording everything on her iPhone. Technically she shouldn’t, not without asking permission, but she did it anyway. She’d developed a technique – a quick pass of the hand over her pocket, knew the keys without looking. Beep-beep with her fingers and she was recording, pretending with the notepad. ‘Our constable said you had something you wanted to talk about.’

‘Yes,’ said Amy. Her eyes were very intense, spiralled with broken veins. ‘I saw the body. Lots of us did.’

‘That was unfortunate,’ Ben said. ‘We do our utmost to preserve scenes. Sometimes we don’t manage it.’

‘Did you know,’ she said, ‘that you can see the soul leave the body? If you watch hard enough you’ll see it.’

Zoë lowered her face and pretended to write in her notepad. If Goodsy had brought them down here to hear about souls and spirits she’d kill him. ‘So – Amy. Did you see a soul? Leaving her body?’

She shook her head. ‘It had already gone. A long time ago.’

‘How long?’

‘When she died. Last night. They don’t hang around. It has to be the first half an hour.’

‘How do you know it was last night?’

‘Because of the bracelet.’

Ben raised an eyebrow. ‘The bracelet?’

‘She was wearing a bracelet. I saw it. When they found her body I saw the bracelet.’

Amy was right – Lorne had been wearing a bracelet. A dangly charm bracelet with a plated silver skull and miniature cutlery: a knife, fork and spoon. Also a lucky ‘16’, which she’d got for her birthday. It had been listed by her parents in the missing-persons report.

‘What about the bracelet? Why’s that important?’

‘Because I heard it. Last night.’ She took another deep drag, held it, then let it all out in a long, bluish stream. ‘You hear it all – sitting in here you hear every part of life. They all use the towpath, don’t they? You get the fights and the quarrels, the parties and the lovers. Mostly it’s just bike bells. Last night it was a girl with something dangling. Chink-chink, it went.’ She held up her finger and thumb, opened and closed them like a little beak. ‘Chink-chink.’

‘OK. And anything else?’

‘Apart from the chink-chink? Not much.’

‘Not much?’

‘No. Unless you count the conversation.’

‘The conversation?’ Ben said. ‘There was a conversation too?’

‘On the phone. You get used to knowing if it’s on the phone. At first, when I moved here, I used to think they were talking to a ghost – wandering along chit-chatting, no one answering. It took me ages to work it out. I don’t do technology – haven’t got a mobile phone and I won’t. Thank you very much.’ She gave a small, polite nod – as if Ben had offered her a free mobile and she’d been forced, graciously, to turn him down.

‘And you think it was Lorne?’

‘I’m sure it was.’

‘You didn’t see her?’

‘Just her feet. Wearing the same shoes as the ones that were next to her body. I saw those too, when they found her body. I take these things in.’

‘What time was this?’

‘A little before eight? It was quiet – the rush had finished. I’d say maybe seven thirty, seven forty-five?’

‘You sure?’

‘I’m sure.’

Zoë and Ben exchanged glances. When Lorne had gone missing, the OIC – the officer in charge of the missing-persons case – had got historical cell site analysis on her phone, which revealed she’d had one phone conversation yesterday evening, with her friend – a call that finished at seven forty-five. That must be what Amy had overheard. Which gave them an accurate time for when Lorne was on the path.

‘Amy,’ Ben said, ‘did you hear what she was talking about?’

‘I heard one thing. Just one. She said, “Oh, God, I’ve had enough …”’

‘“Oh, God, I’ve had enough”?’

‘Yes.’

‘So she was upset?’

‘A bit fed up, maybe. But not crying or anything. Sad – but not scared.’

Ben wrote something down. ‘And she was definitely alone? You didn’t hear anyone else with her?’

‘No.’ Amy was clear. ‘She was alone.’

‘So she said, “Oh, God, I’ve had enough,” and then …’

‘Then she just walked on. Chink-chink-chink.’ Amy clenched the cigarette between her teeth, eyes screwed up against the smoke, and waved her hand back in the direction of the crime scene. ‘That way. Off to where it happened. I didn’t hear anything after that. Not until she turned up dead. Raped, too, I suppose. I mean, that’s what it’s usually about – men and the way they hate women.’

Raped, too, I suppose
. Zoë glanced up out of the window, at the sun falling on the towpath, and wondered what was under the tarpaulin Lorne had been covered with. Truthfully, she’d like to find a way of wriggling out of the PM. She couldn’t, of course. Something like that would get around the force in no time.

They sat a bit longer and talked to Amy, but apart from the phone conversation, she didn’t have anything to add to the case. Eventually Ben got to his feet. ‘You’ve been very helpful. Thank you.’

Zoë rose and followed him. He’d already got to the deck and she was still in the galley when a loud, meaningful cough from behind stopped her. She turned and saw Amy smiling at her, a finger to her lips. ‘What?’

‘Him,’ Amy hissed, jabbing a finger at the deck. ‘There’s no point you wasting your time on him. He’s gay. You can see it from the way he wears his clothes.’

Zoë looked back to the staircase. Ben was waiting on deck in the sunlight, his shadow lying a short way down the stairs. She could see his shoes, well polished, expensive. His suit – which was probably off-the-peg M&S – he managed to wear as if it was Armani. Amy was right – he looked like something from an aftershave ad. ‘This isn’t something we should be talking about,’ she murmured. ‘Not under the circumstances.’

‘I know, but he is, isn’t he?’ Amy smiled. ‘Go on. He has to be.’

‘I really wouldn’t know. It’s not the sort of thing I’ve ever given any thought to. Now.’ She looked at her watch. ‘I’m on my way. Thank you, Amy. You’ve given me a lot to think about.’