Hanging Hill (20 page)

40

The whisky wore off quickly. They kept themselves together by setting a timer to fifteen minutes. They’d force themselves to work for those minutes, but the moment the timer went off they’d rip off their gloves, drop them on the plastic next to the remains of David Goldrab, and go back into the garage, where they’d stand with their backs to the mess in the garden, drinking another whisky, washing it down with water. They didn’t speak, just drank in silence, holding each other’s eyes as if they needed to look at a living human being. To see flesh that had blood and heat and life moving through it.

‘We can’t go on drinking,’ Steve said. ‘We’ve got to drive.’

Sally let her eyes stray outside to the plastic mat – slick purple lumps shining in the moonlight. Steve kept saying he had good reason to know what the police were like – that without a body and a motive they’d have nowhere to start. He said that human remains were easier to hide than anyone believed – that most criminals just lacked the time, resources and basic balls to hide their victims properly. That it was easy as long as you had the stomach to make the remains unrecognizable as human. Then you could hide them under the noses of the law and they’d walk straight past them. Sally thought he was only talking as if he knew what he was doing to reassure her, but she said nothing. ‘It’s easier from now,’ he said. ‘The worst bit’s over. We can stop the whisky. And we should try to eat something.’

She shook her head. ‘I’m never going to eat again.’

‘Me neither. I’m just saying we should.’

They went back outside and began dividing the pieces into eight piles. Steve had a pair of pliers, which he used to remove some teeth from David’s broken bottom jaw. There was no vice in the garage so he had to hold the jaw between his knees to get a purchase on it. Sally took photos using his camera. She heard the noise of gristle tearing as the teeth came from their sockets, and knew she’d never forget it. To the electric drill he fitted an attachment with a helical blade, meant for mixing paint, then together they loaded joints of bone and flesh into a bucket. They used more plastic sheet taped down around the drill to stop the contents spraying out and Steve switched it on, ramming it into the bucket over and over again, pulverizing the pieces.

By one in the morning he was covered with sweat and ten Lidl carrier bags sat on the lawn, each bulging with an unrecognizable red paste. Sally said they should say a prayer or something. Or make some sort of gesture to mark the death.

‘You think anyone’s up there to hear a prayer like that?’

‘I don’t know.’ She stood on the driveway, transfixed by the bags. ‘Maybe it doesn’t matter if we believe – maybe it only matters if
he
did. David.’

Steve shook his head. ‘Forgive me, Sally, but we just don’t have time for a morality lesson. If there is a God up there, then don’t waste His time praying for David Goldrab’s soul. Just pray – as hard as you can.’

‘For what?’

‘For us.’

41

The clouds cleared and the moon sat, low and dazzling, over the Somerset countryside. Sally arranged her jam-making pans outside on the lawn, filled them with limescale remover and cleaned everything they’d used – the drill, the chainsaw, the plastic sheet, the plastic bags. Then she cut all the plastic into small squares the size of postage stamps and placed them in a bin liner. Meanwhile Steve piled up the clothing they’d worn – with the shoes, the towels – heaped it in a flowerbed on the west side of the house, poured paraffin on it and set it alight. When the fire had died and they’d dug the ashes into the soil, they spread more plastic in the boot of the Audi and loaded in the carrier bags. An eleventh, containing hair and larger pieces of bone that hadn’t been pulverized by the mixer, went into the well below the back passenger seats. The remains filled the car with a foul mixture of offal and faeces. Sally and Steve kept their coats on, the heater up high, the windows wide open.

Steve was from the countryside outside Taunton. He was a rambler – someone who had every Ordnance Survey map of the British Isles ordered neatly according to their code number on his bookshelves. He knew the border lands of Somerset, Gloucestershire and Wiltshire better than Sally did and he had a route already planned. It took in rivers and canals, forests where badgers foraged at night. It took in the Severn estuary – Steve waded out into the mud in the giant grey shadow of the decommissioned nuclear power plant at Berkeley. They stopped on the outskirts of villages and squeezed dollops through sewage grates in the road; they tramped across fields in the Mendips to press the contents of the last bag through the meshes that protected disused Roman mineshafts. Steve stood in the silent darkness, his ear close to the mesh, straining to hear the soft wet patter of the tissue hitting the sides of the shaft.

From time to time Sally turned and looked at his face as he drove, the glow of the dashboard lighting it. She watched his eyes on the road and a strange thought came to her – that for the first time in her life she’d done something as a partnership. An ugly, perverse, unthinkable thing, but it had been done by equals. Crazy though it all was, she decided it was the closest she’d ever been to anyone in her life.

He turned and caught her looking at him. He held her eyes, just for a second, and in that moment something passed between them. Something that made her stomach stir, as if an odd strength was gathering. Like the beginnings of excitement on a holiday, the desire to yell and dance. She opened the window and threw a handful of the shredded plastic into the slipstream, watched it in the wing-mirror, like confetti, lit red by the rear lights. It was so beautiful it could have belonged to a celebration. Funny, she thought, how everything in life was so deceptive.

Part Two

1

‘I’ve got something for you.’

‘About time too.’

‘These things don’t just happen overnight. It’s not the way it works.’

The guy at the other end of the phone – a clerk at SOCA, the Serious Organized Crime Agency – was getting a little weary of Zoë and the way she kept pressing him for an answer. It was Monday and in the last four days she’d called at least twice a day to find out if he had any results for the search she’d requested on a pornographer from London, nicknamed London Tarn.

‘Maybe not overnight, but within the next year isn’t too much to expect, is it?’

‘There’s no need to be sarcastic.’

‘Well, if you weren’t so fucking slow I wouldn’t have to be,’ she wanted to say, but she pressed her lips together, tapped her finger on the desk and kept her control. London Tarn had been the manager of the Bristol club she’d worked in – the only person from that time who’d known her real name. She’d never thought she’d hear of him again – she thought he had disappeared abroad, but no. Apparently all these years she’d been living on borrowed time, because he’d been in the UK all the while, somewhere in this area, and if he ever had any cause to be called into the nick and heard the name Zoë Benedict attached to the title ‘Detective Inspector’ – she’d be screwed, so screwed. That was the thing about the past. You never really appreciated its power until it was too late.

She swung the chair back and forth impatiently. At least her energy was back. Finding him was helping her not to think about Ben. ‘Fair enough,’ she said. ‘Fair dos. Thank you for what you’ve done. How’s it going to come to me?’

‘Email. It should be on your system now. Unless your web-master is being a jobsworth.’

She tapped in her password and scanned her inbox. It was there – an email loaded with attachments. ‘Yup – I’ve got it.’

‘There are some pieces missing. If they’ve got form you’ll get a mug shot – but some haven’t been convicted and we’re building intelligence packages on them, so on those the photos might be missing. Do you want me to take you through what’s there?’

‘Sure – I mean …’ She put her tongue between her teeth and began scrolling down the list of attachments. SOCA gathered information from an array of agencies: the old Vice and Street Offences squads, Serious Crime groups across the country, Customs and Excise, Trading Standards, even the Department of Work and Pensions. Sometimes the files they sent looked like ancient computer MS DOS printouts. She found one that looked promising and clicked on it. A list of names reeled down the screen. ‘It looks like a hell of a lot. Are there really that many pornographers in this country?’

‘I’ve narrowed it down for you best I could. I couldn’t find the name London Town anywhere.’

‘No – that was probably just a nickname he picked up out here.’

‘But you wanted me to look at Londoners, right?’

‘Londoners who came out to the west in the nineties.’

‘Well, as you can see there were lots. And a few I thought you might want to look at closely. There’s a Franc Kaminski. Made a fortune from an online porn site called Myrichdaddy. Serious Crime have been after him for years – the website’s got a portal to a newsgroup that’s basically a kiddie-porn site.’

‘Franc Kaminski? Polish?’

‘Maybe his parents. But he’s a Londoner.’

‘Kaminski?’ She tapped her teeth thoughtfully with her pen. ‘I don’t know. When did he come out west?’

‘1998.’

‘Nope. It’s not him. This guy arrived in 1993. And child porn sounds wrong.’

‘OK. Scratch him, and the next two – they’re definitely child porn. Look at Mike Beckton. He was there some time in the early eighties, hard to be specific. He’s in the slammer at the moment. There’s a photo.’

‘Yup – I can see that. It’s not him. And this guy under him?’ She was looking at a picture of a Middle Eastern guy. ‘Halim something or other, can’t pronounce it, that’s not him. The one I’m looking for is pretty much completely white bread. If he’s anything at all he might be Jewish.’

‘Right – that rules out some of these. Tell you what, keep scrolling down. There are four at the bottom who both came to Bristol from London. No photos but they’re all listed as IC ones – white.’

‘Yup. I see them. Jo Gordon-Catling? Doesn’t sound right – but I’d like to see him.’

‘I’ve just had his photo come through this morning. I’ll scan it when we get off the line and send it over to you. The last three photos are coming directly from your force targeting team. The case officer’s got your email address. He’ll send you photos later.’

She put her finger on the screen, looking at the last names. ‘Mark Rainer?’

‘Yup. They still haven’t nicked him but he’s wanted for importing porn that breached the Sexual Offences Act – S and M stuff and, of course, the law’s all changed on that. Richard Rose – he’s small-time, hasn’t been active for years; we think he’s gone straight, but might be worth a look. The last one’s the biggest hitter of the lot – got overseas connections. Military. In the late nineties he was using Special Boat Squadron guys to smuggle nasty stuff into the country – paying them a grand a pop to bring a launch in through Poole, used a mooring in one of those millionaire pads on Sandbanks. The Met’s Organized Crime Group has got him firmly on their radar, not to mention their e-crime unit – even the Specialist Investigations Directorate at the Inland Revenue have given him a good hiding. But this boy’s as slippery as a butcher’s you-know-what. They just can’t make it stick.’

‘OK. What’s his name?’

‘Goldrab.’

‘Goldrab?’

‘That’s right. David Adam Goldrab.’

2

It was hot in the office. The printer was still whirring, churning out hot sheets of paper. Zoë stared at the names, willing them to mean something – to convey something to her. Marc Rainer, Jo Gordon-Catling, Richard Rose, David Goldrab. ‘Come on, London Tarn,’ she murmured. ‘Which one is you?’

None of the documentation helped. She needed a face to put to the details. But the emails from SOCA and the targeting team could take ages. She pushed back her chair, wandered out into the kitchen at the end of the corridor and put on the kettle. Waiting for it to boil, she stood at the window, idly looking down into the car park. There were marked vehicles moving around down there, in and out, pedestrians coming and going. Finding London Tarn, after all these years? She wasn’t sure how she felt about that at all.

She was about to turn away when she noticed an officer and a teenage boy in school uniform coming across the forecourt. She put her forehead against the window. She recognized the thatch of blond hair. It was Peter Cyrus – Millie’s friend. Frowning, she switched off the kettle and went out into the corridor. DC Goods was coming out of the incident room, scanning a memo.

‘Goodsy?’

He looked up. ‘Hmm?’

‘One of Ralph Hernandez’s friends is in the building. Peter Cyrus. Any idea what that’s about?’

He cocked his head on one side. ‘Don’t you know?’

‘Don’t I know what?’

‘About the CCTV.’

‘What CCTV?’

‘I thought everyone knew.’

‘Well, probably
everyone
does. Just not
me
. You know.’ She tapped her forehead. ‘I’ve got that sign here that says, “Important information to share? Please ensure I’m the last person you tell.”’

He shrugged apologetically. ‘Ben’s had a team trawling the pubs. The ones Hernandez was supposed to be drinking in with his mates?’

‘Ye-es,’ she said cautiously.

‘Well, he wasn’t there. None of them were. We’ve interviewed regulars and the bar staff, who’ve checked till receipts and CCTV. They’ve all been lying.’

3

Zoë couldn’t see Peter Cyrus anywhere, but she found Nial Sweetman sitting in a surly huddle in the reception area. She saw him through the glass door as she came down the corridor and knew from his face he’d rather be anywhere than there. He glanced up at the sound of the door opening, and when he saw it was her, a faint ray of hope crossed his face. She shook her head. ‘No. It’s not me who’s interviewing you. I’m sorry.’

He drooped back, elbows on knees, staring at the floor. Zoë glanced at the desk sergeant, who was speaking on the phone, standing staring out of the window, not paying attention. She stood near Nial, her arms crossed, monitoring the sergeant out of the corner of her eye, speaking in a low whisper out of the side of her mouth.

‘I shouldn’t talk to you. I could get into serious trouble. They could even charge you with obstruction.’

‘I know,’ he muttered. ‘That’s what my dad said might happen.’

‘Why the hell did you do it?’

Nial shrugged. ‘Because he’s a mate? Because I thought it was a good idea. That’s what I’m going to tell them. That it was my idea.’

‘Well,
was
it?’

‘Of course,’ he said evasively. ‘And that’s what Ralph’s going to say. And Peter.’

‘You know the shit load of trouble you’re going to be in.’

‘He’s a mate,’ he said fiercely, ‘and mates look out for each other.’

Zoë shook her head. When would people learn? The desk sergeant was yawning now, scratching his chest as he talked. ‘So, Nial,’ she murmured, ‘when they ask you where you really were that night, what’re you going to say?’

‘That I was at home.’

‘With Ralph?’

‘Well …’ Nial shifted uneasily.

‘Well?’

He rubbed his nose and glanced at the open door, the sunlight coming down in the street outside. He gave it a hungry look, as if he was going to sign a pact with the devil and knew that might be the last daylight he ever saw.

‘Nial?’

‘No,’ he admitted. ‘Not with him. I don’t know where he was. But I can promise you this.’ He stared up at her. There were red patches on his face. ‘I can promise you he wasn’t out hurting Lorne Wood.’