Hanging Hill (22 page)

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 answers 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?’

‘The gardeners come once a week. The Pultman brothers. They’re from Swindon.’

‘Pultman.’ Zoë noted it carefully. ‘And the pool man. He was from a company in Keynsham. Anyone else?’

‘Not that I can think of.’

‘Does David talk to you a lot?’

‘Not really.’

‘Not really? What does that mean?’

Sally picked at the label on the bottle. ‘Just means not a lot.’

Zoë’s attention wandered distractedly back to Sally’s hands. The faintly deformed finger. God, but the past was coming back in droves these days. Just like the snow outside the window in her dream. ‘So? Apart from today, the last time you were there was when?’

‘Last Tuesday. Like I said.’

‘You didn’t notice anything suspicious?’

Sally fiddled more with the label. ‘No. Not really.’

‘And he didn’t say anything about planning to go away?’

She shook her head.

‘You see,’ Zoë said, ‘everything in that house is telling me something’s happened to Mr Goldrab. Now, I’ll be honest, I’m floundering a bit. If he’s come to harm I’m stuck – because I don’t know where to start. So if you remember anything,
anything
at all – doesn’t matter how small or insignificant it is, just something that you can add to this – please say it because I—’

‘Jake,’ Sally said abruptly. ‘Jake.’

Zoë stopped writing. ‘I beg your pardon?’

‘He turned up when I was there. David called him Jake the Peg.’

‘What did he look like?’

‘Not very tall. His hair cut quite short. Maybe mixed race, I wasn’t quite sure.’

‘Drives a purple Shogun jeep?’

‘Yes. Do you know him?’

‘You could say that.’ She tipped her head on one side. ‘So, Sally. When Jake turned up, what exactly happened?’

‘It got nasty. There was an argument. Then he went.’

‘An argument? About what?’

‘Jake hadn’t been over for months – then he turned up and tried to use David’s gate code. I think that’s what it was about. I was in the office and they were in the hallway so I couldn’t hear it all. They were shouting for a while – then Jake left.’

‘He didn’t say he’d be back later in the week? No chance he could have come over again on Thursday to finish the argument?’

‘I don’t know. I didn’t hear him say he would.’

‘We found a crossbow in the utility room. You saw that this morning, didn’t you – saw where we found it?’

Sally nodded.

‘You don’t know how it came to be in there, do you?’ She was monitoring Sally’s fingers. They were tearing at the label now. ‘Seems a strange place to put a crossbow. And then leave all your doors open and go out for a drive.’

‘It was always on the stand on the landing. I used to clean the case.’

‘You never saw him use it?’

‘No.’

‘And you haven’t been back to Lightpil since last Tuesday? And you weren’t there Thursday, for example? That was the last time anyone spoke to him.’

She shook her head. Wrapped her arms around herself as if someone had suddenly opened the window.

‘What’s making you nervous, Sally? Why the nerves?’

‘What?’

‘You’re shaking.’

‘No, I’m not.’

‘Yes, you are. You’re shaking like a leaf. And fidgeting.’

‘It’s been a shock.’

‘Goldrab going missing? The Lucozade’s supposed to help you with that. Isn’t it working?’

‘I didn’t expect to see you.’ She shivered, looked away again and hugged herself harder, rubbing her hands up and down her arms. ‘That’s all. Can I go now?’

Zoë didn’t speak for a moment or two. She twirled the pen thoughtfully. ‘I heard about the divorce,’ she said eventually. ‘Mum and Dad didn’t say, but you do hear things around this town, don’t you? I was sorry about it all.’

‘Yes. Well. That was a long time ago now.’

‘If you don’t mind me asking, why did you leave?’

‘I didn’t leave. He left me.’

Zoë stopped twirling the pen. ‘
He
left
you
?’

‘Yes. More than a year and a half ago.’

She didn’t know what to say. She studied her sister – really studied her. An attractive woman coming up for middle age, but no stunning beauty. Her hair had lost the pure, lemony blonde streaks of childhood and was coarser now. The clothing under the tabard, though nice, was well-worn and threadbare. She was working as a cleaner – a cleaner and housekeeper for a pornographer. Julian had left her and she was bringing up Millie alone. Out of nowhere, an enormous, awful wave came up inside Zoë. An overwhelming urge to stand and hug her sister.

She coughed. Pushed her hair out of her eyes.

‘Right.’ She handed Sally the statement. ‘If you’d just put a signature there, you can go. Told you it wouldn’t take long, didn’t I?’

10

When Sally had gone, Zoë sat staring into space. It was ten minutes before she shook herself, and began to think about Lorne and Goldrab again.

She started by doling out some tasks for her DCs. Then she leafed through her messages, checked her emails and put in a request to reclassify David Goldrab’s status as a misper. If he really was dead, the question remained: why? If he’d had a hand in Lorne’s death, could he have been killed
because
of it? In revenge? Lorne’s dad, maybe? Or had Goldrab known who Lorne’s killer was and died because he’d threatened to reveal what he knew? Or – and this was the eventuality she was struggling with – maybe Lorne’s connection to the porn industry really had stopped with the approach to Holden’s Agency and Goldrab’s disappearance was entirely unconnected. Either way she wouldn’t be completely at rest until she knew for sure he was dead – until she had seen his body on a slab in the mortuary, seen it cut down the middle the way Lorne’s had been. Perhaps then that jumpy thing in her would roll back a bit. Keep its peace.

But what about Sally? And all that had happened in their pasts? What would make
that
poisonous thorn go away? An apology? she thought, rubbing her knuckles. How the hell did you go about apologizing for something like that?

Another message popped up – this time from the high-tech unit who, in less than two hours, had cracked through the administrator password page on the CCTV and analysed the footage from the front of Lightpil House. She read the email quickly: the team had found no record of Goldrab leaving the house on the Thursday. He’d been out to the stables in the morning, had come back at ten and hadn’t been picked up by the CCTV camera since. Which must mean he’d exited through the side entrance not covered by the camera. What the team had found, however, was five-minute footage of a serious altercation that had taken place outside the house at about three p.m. that same day. She closed the office blinds again, and watched the segments of video they’d attached to the email. A suntanned young man next to a jeep, dodging crossbow bolts. Jake the Peg jumping like a monkey on hot coals.

Jake, she thought, tapping the screen. Jake the Peg. Sally was right, you naughty boy.

11

Jake the Peg’s home was on the road from Bath to Bristol and didn’t look as if it belonged to a porn star. Apart from the small security camera trained on the jeep that stood outside, it was an ordinary thirties house with metal lattice windows and deco-inspired stained-glass porches – the type of building that had survived the bombing during the war because it was part of the suburban sprawl and too remote from the vital organs of the city to have interested the Germans. Zoë pulled up at just after four o’clock to find the curtains still closed. She sat for a while, considering the house. It was a bit like her parents’ place had been. People who lived in a place like that shouldn’t have been able to afford to send two children to boarding-school. Not unless they had very good reason to separate them. Very good reason. Earlier today in the office Sally had looked broken. Really broken.
Julian
had left
her
. Not the other way round. That didn’t fit at all.

Zoë locked the car, went up the path, rang the bell and stood on the doorstep, listening for movement inside. After three or four minutes had elapsed she rang the bell again. This time there was a muffled thump, then someone called out, ‘Coming, coming.’

The boy who answered the door couldn’t have been much more than seventeen. But what he lacked in maturity he made up for in sass. Dusky brown – maybe from Vietnam or the Philippines – his hair was shaved at the sides and neck, with an area on top that had been teased into a small pompadour. He wore a gold chain and an iPhone holder velcroed to his upper arm. Aside from that, he was naked except for a pair of tight pink boxers, with ‘Wow’ printed across the crotch. When he saw Zoë’s warrant card he laid a hand on his chest as if to say this just wasn’t the sort of thing that happened to him every day – did anyone mind if he fainted?

‘Is Mr Drago here?’

‘No! Him asleep.’ He eyed the card warily. ‘You police?’

‘That’s right. What’s your name?’

‘Angel. Why?’

‘OK, Angel. I think I’ll come in, if you don’t mind.’

He tutted, but swivelled haughtily on his heels and disappeared into the house. She followed. The underpants, she saw, had ‘Kitty’ emblazoned on the buttocks.

If the place was a typical thirties house on the outside, inside it was anything but. The front room – where most families would have had a gas fire, a TV, a sofa – had been turned into a gym with lots of black and chrome equipment. One wall was painted lime green, with a blown-up black-and-white image of a young man looking coquettishly over his shoulder. The back room, which led out to the kitchen, was the living area, with sixties geometric wallpaper, suede furniture and different-coloured neon tubes suspended from the ceiling. It was very cold, but Angel didn’t seem to notice. He yelled up at the ceiling, ‘JAAAAKE. JAAAKE. Important you come now.’ Then he went into the little kitchenette and began making tea, breaking off every now and again to execute a demi-plié, holding the fridge handle to balance himself.

There was the sound of someone falling out of bed overhead. Zoë found a seat and sat with her back to the wall, in the corner, where there was a precious pocket of warmth. No wonder it was cold – the windows were open. Original thirties leaded panes, propped open on metal latches. When they were kids, at Christmas Sally would paint each pane of glass in their bedroom windows. Every one a different colour. Silver, green, red.

‘’S bloody freezing in here.’ Jake came in, swaddled in a duvet, his teeth chattering. He scowled at Zoë, but he wasn’t awake enough for a fight. He seemed more worried about the heating. ‘What’ve you got against a bit of warmth?’ he yelled at Angel. ‘You fucking freak of nature.’

‘Listen her,’ Angel said sarcastically. ‘She Wicked White Witch on the sleigh. Ice Queen.’

‘Shut up,’ Jake said. ‘Shut up.’

‘Ooh –
crooooooel
. Yours is a problem in the blood.’ He pronounced it
blod
. ‘Not enough to go round your whole body. Problem starts in the little fingers and we all know where it ends.’

‘Shut
up
.’

Angel made a small disgusted click in the back of his throat, put his chin up and flicked back a hand, as if it was no surprise to him, none at all, that a person as ignorant and crude as Jake would have brought the police to his house – as if that was to be expected of people like him. He turned on a heel, his nose in the air, and disappeared upstairs, slamming the door.

‘Ignore him.’ Jake closed the window bad-temperedly and put his hand on the radiator to check it for warmth. He found none. He bent and turned the valve on full. ‘Tried to teach him some manners, didn’t I? But with his lot, what do you expect?’

Zoë examined the mug she’d been given. It had pictures of Billie Holiday hand-painted in pinks and greens. ‘How did you keep this secret from us all these years?’ She nodded to the door through which Angel had huffed off. ‘Jake the Peg and his boyfriend. I admit it wasn’t what I’d expected. And even more spectacular, in the revelations stakes, Jake the Peg
the porn star
? You slipped that one by us, no pun intended. But you’re a celebrity! I’ve been watching some of your appearances recently. At the office. They all have. Funny, thinking about it now, but you always seemed so much smaller in the flesh.’

Jake looked steadily at her. He sat down. ‘I know why you’re here.’

‘Do you? Go on, then. Tell me.’

‘Jake does barely legals, innit? Because there was them school-girls in it? But see that vid with the yellow spine over there? On the shelf? Get it out. Go on. It’s a vid of each of them girls, with their passports held up to the camera. Proof they was all eighteen.’

‘Barely legals? Funny – that’s not why I’m here.’

Jake frowned. ‘I’m telling you – I do my homework, man, learn the law. This is proper business now and I’m clean. Easy.’

‘I’m sure you are, Jake, I’m sure you are. I’ve always had absolute faith in you. But that’s not why I’m here. I want to talk to you about Lorne Wood.’

He sucked his teeth, rolled his eyes. ‘Yeah. You asked me about her already. What do you want to know now?’

‘I want you to revisit your memory. Have a double-check in the grey matter. Sometimes things slip our minds.’

‘We talked about this.’

‘Yes, but I asked you whether you saw her outside the school. What I didn’t ask you was whether she ever turned up on one of your sets.’

‘Her?’ Jake gave a short sarcastic laugh. ‘No fucking way. Too classy.’

‘You sure? You sure David Goldrab never introduced you two?’

Jake’s face changed. It went flat. ‘Goldrab? What’s he got to do with anything?’

‘You do know him? Don’t you?’

‘See, you ask that question like I’m some kind of eejit, man. Like I’m some eight-year-old. But I ain’t. Because what I worked out is I don’t got to answer that. And I don’t got to because you already know the answer. Or else you wouldn’t’ve asked it.’

‘I’m impressed. Is there no end to your talents?’

‘And whatever he’s said about me, whatever he’s told you, it’s because he hates me.’

‘He hasn’t said anything about you.’

‘It should be him you’re nosing around, not me. He’s a homophobe. You can get him for discrimination and that.’

‘You obviously didn’t hear me. I said, he hasn’t said anything about you. Because, at the moment, he’s not saying very much at all.’

Jake creased his forehead. He pulled the duvet tightly around him. His feet poking out of the bottom were bottle-tanned, the nails neatly cut and shining subtly with clear varnish. ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

‘It means that the last trace we have of him is Thursday, the twelfth of May. His mother spoke to him in the morning, didn’t hear from him again. Nobody has.’

That stopped Jake in his tracks. ‘Right,’ he said slowly. ‘Right.’

‘When was the last time you saw him?’

‘Thursday, the twelfth of May. Four days ago. I’ve tried to wipe it from my mind. He stopped giving me my proper respect, know what I mean?’

‘That’ll be the day he went missing.’ She sipped her tea. ‘Did you have an amicable meeting that day?’

‘No. But you know that because you got it all on camera – on his spy cameras. Like when he assaulted me? Saw that, did you?’

‘We did. Care to tell me what the disagreement was about?’

‘About him being fucked up. Bein’ a homophobe. Can’t stand the sight of me since he heard about—’ He jerked his head to the ceiling to indicate Angel.

‘And he tried to shoot you because of it?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Did you come back later that day? Or had your meeting come to a – how can we put it? – a natural conclusion at that point?’

Jake rolled his eyes again. ‘You having a joke? No – I never went back. Never will.’

‘I don’t know about this, Jake. Something’s not right. You were the last person to see this guy alive.’

‘Yes, except there are whole streetfuls of people who’d like to see that dick go missing. Why are you chewing
me
out about it?’

‘Streetfuls of people want him to go missing?’ Zoë scooped out her iPhone. ‘That sounds interesting. I’m sure you won’t take offence if I record this.’

‘I would.’

She lowered the phone. ‘That’s fair, Jake, not to want to have your voice on record. But let me put it on my notepad. You have my guarantee it won’t have your voice on it.’

He raised his nose disdainfully. He unfurled a hand in her direction, held it open. She looked at it for a moment. Then she clicked the phone into
Notes
and passed it to him. He gave the phone a brief derisory scan, as if it was a bit of roadkill she’d brought in for him to inspect, then thrust it back at her. She took it and began tapping in words as he spoke.

‘He’s got enemies.’ He gave the phone a suspicious look, but began to reel off names anyway, counting them on his fingers. ‘There’s this girl from Essex called Candi. I’m telling you, she would
shoot
him. In the street, tomorrow, if she saw him.’

‘A girl? A woman? Making a grown man disappear? I don’t know – we don’t usually put women in the frame for something like this.’

‘Candi? I mean, fuck, man, she’d eat your eyes out, that one. She’s got a habit and she lives with some guy called Fraser, I don’t know where exactly – somewhere over that side of the world. Then there’s this ex-SAS guy. Built like that.’ He held out his arms to indicate the man’s height and size. ‘Always used to hang around the shoots – he’s got an itch about David, know what I mean? Spanner, they called him. Don’t know why. Think his real name was Anthony or something. But … nah – he’d never have the balls for it. But there’s another one. One I really think is whacked enough to do it.’

Zoë stopped tapping and looked up at him.

‘I never knew his name.’ Jake’s voice was sober and low when he said ‘his’, as if speaking the word alone could bring hellfire down into his little thirties semi. ‘But he was the type, you know. He’d get in and out and no one would’ve seen a thing.’

‘Who was he?’

‘Dunno. Only met him once when he was down for a shoot. That’s how David done his business, innit? He’s got some gamekeeper raises pheasants for him and these dudes visit when there’s a shoot organized. This guy came down and was mouthing off. He was something in the military. The – what d’ya call it? – Ministry of you know …’

‘Defence? The Ministry of Defence?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Christian name?’

‘Dunno. David just called him “mate”. They knew each other in Kosovo. And that’s all I know about him. Otherwise, swear’ – he held his hands up – ‘I’d give it to you.’

‘Any others?’

‘No.’

Zoë tapped the last few words in, saved it, then clicked the phone off and put it into her pocket. She took a moment or two to regroup, then leaned forward to him, her elbows on her knees.

‘What?’

‘I’ve still got a problem, Jake. I mean, meet my eyes and tell me I look convinced you had nothing to do with Goldrab going missing.’

‘What the fuck’re you talking about?’

‘None of those names gets you off the hook. Do they?’

‘But I’ve got an alibi for that afternoon. Which is good news.’

‘Depending on your perspective. Who is it? Angel? Because
he
’d convince a jury.’

Jake gave her a sly smile, the diamond in his front tooth glinting at her, as if this was the most satisfying thing he’d done in years. ‘That’s the easiest question you’ve asked, sista. I tore my jeans when David was shooting at me. When I seen what I done I go straight into town and buy a new pair. River Island. Their workers’ll remember me and for sure they’ve got a CCTV there.’

‘But as an alibi it doesn’t work because, of course, we don’t know exactly when Goldrab went missing. It was probably that afternoon some time, because his mother couldn’t reach him on the phone in the evening, but we can’t say for sure. You could have come back later and dealt with him then. Say, six or seven o’clock.’

‘That’s OK too. Straight after I got the new jeans I went to the cinema. With my mates. I used my credit card and there were six of us. And then we spent the rest of the night in the Slug on George Street. So wherever David Goldrab was going that night, whoever he met, it weren’t me. But none of that matters, does it?’

Zoë raised an eyebrow. ‘Doesn’t it?’

‘Nah,’ he said, with a smug smile. ‘Because David hasn’t been
killed
. David – Mr clever fucking Goldrab – oh, no, not him.
He
has
disappeared
himself.’