Hanging Hill (23 page)

12

The air above the field was full of drifting white butterflies. Like fairies floating on the wind, they trailed past Sally’s face, blocking the sunlight, alighting on her shoulders and hands. To her right she could see shapes, indistinct in the blizzard. They were important, instinctively she knew they were, and she began to walk towards them, her hands shielding her face from the insects. The first shape was big, standing high, a giant, moving white mass. A car, she saw, as she got nearer – she could make out wing mirrors and headlights through the throng. She clapped her hands and the butterflies lifted in a cloud, spun and flapped. Underneath them the car bonnet was black and shiny, and Sally saw it was Steve’s Audi. Which meant, she was sure, that the shape on the ground, ten feet away, cocooned in white, was David Goldrab.

Her heart began to pound, a giant drum, filling her chest. She took a few steps, crunching on butterflies, breaking their bodies under her shoes. David lay on his back, motionless, his arms folded across his chest, as if he was in a sarcophagus, butterflies covering his face. She didn’t want to approach, but she knew she had to. She got to within a foot, and although every sense was telling her not to, she crouched near his head, stretched her hand out towards him.

The body moved. It rolled towards her and began to sit up. A hand shot out and gripped her. The butterflies swarmed away from the face but it wasn’t David under there. It was Zoë, sitting up and looking beseechingly at Sally, as if she was at the bottom of a very deep hole, and Sally was the only light she could see.

‘Sally?’ A hand was shaking her. ‘Sally? Wake up.’

She covered her face with her hands. ‘What?’ she mumbled.

‘You were crying.’

She opened her eyes. The room was dark, the bedside clock casting just a faint glow. Three o’clock. Steve was lying behind her, his hand on her shoulder. She touched her fingers lightly to her face and found her cheeks were wet.

13

He has disappeared himself …

Jake’s words kept knocking at Zoë. She’d been almost certain for a while that Goldrab was dead, but now she wasn’t so sure. It hadn’t occurred to her before that he could disappear himself. But now she saw it was feasible, and the thought made her more than uneasy. If he wasn’t dead it meant he could come back at any time, walk into her life and cut her down in one swipe. Because that was the sort of bastard he was.

The next day she got straight to work, ploughing through the list Jake had given her, putting out feelers – calls to Essex Police to track down Candi and Fraser, and to SOCA to see if there were any clues as to who ‘Spanner’ might be. She used the parliamentary website, Dodspeople, to search hundreds of CVs for MoD people who’d done time in Kosovo, and the more digging she did the more convinced she became that the person to start with was a guy named Dominic Mooney. Mooney was now head of intelligence at one of the Foreign Office departments, but what interested her was that he had spent time with the Civil Secretariat in Kosovo at the beginning of the decade and had done three years as the director of a unit set up in Priština to monitor and investigate prostitution and trafficking. If any of his staff in Kosovo had had contact with Goldrab, or had been up to anything suspicious, Mooney would be the one to know.

She put in a call to him in Whitehall, but he was out at a meeting, so she left a message with his secretary, then began systematically working her way through her list of other tasks. She spoke to the gardening company in Swindon, but they didn’t have much to tell her – Goldrab was reclusive, paid them by direct debit, and often the workers would be at Lightpil for eight hours solid without seeing or speaking to him. It was much the same story at the pool company, and at the stables where Goldrab kept his horse, Bruiser. He rode most days, though usually on his own, and paid the livery fees also by direct debit. In fact, no one Zoë spoke to had had any inkling of what Goldrab was like as a person, let alone any idea if he was unhappy or making plans to leave.

DC Goods called from town. Zoë had told him that Jake the Peg was in trouble again and given him the task of finding support for Jake’s alibi. Already he was unearthing evidence: the staff at River Island remembered him, and they had the CCTV footage to prove it. From a glance at the photo, the manager of the cinema too was almost certain she remembered Jake. She was having a look at the time-coded CCTV footage even as they spoke. His alibi for that night seemed watertight. Zoë found she wasn’t much surprised at that: it had felt too easy a solution for Jake to have been the one who had made Goldrab disappear.

She opened an email from the technical team at HQ. The freeze frames of the porn footage lifted from Goldrab’s computers had come back and none of the women was Lorne. She stared at the images, trying to force Lorne’s features into the girls’ faces, but she couldn’t. Again, she wondered if Goldrab’s disappearance was totally coincidental. Did that mean she was leaving Lorne behind by chasing what had happened to Goldrab? She looked at the photo of Lorne pinned to the wall. Come on, she thought, you brought me here, so you tell me – what do I do now? You know I really want David Goldrab. Do I go after it? Or is he nothing to do with you?

There was a knock at the door. She made sure her shirt was straight and tucked in and that her cuffs were buttoned, then swivelled the chair to the door. ‘Yup?’

Ben put his head round the door.

‘Oh.’ Her head felt suddenly heavy, her feet like lead. ‘Ben.’

‘Hi.’

They regarded each other without speaking. Somewhere down the corridor a phone rang. A door at the other end of the building banged. What, she wondered, was the grown-up way to deal with Ben? How would a normal person address what had happened between them? She didn’t know. Hadn’t a clue.

Eventually Ben saved her by speaking. ‘Have you heard?’

‘Heard what?’

‘About Ralph?’

‘What about him?’

‘I thought you should be the first to know.’ He glanced up at her whiteboard, where Ralph’s name was written with a big red line through it. For the first time she noticed dark rings under Ben’s eyes. He’d been working hard. ‘He tried to commit suicide. Two hours ago. His mother found him.’

‘Christ.’ She remembered Ralph crouching here on the floor, his back to the wall, his tears wetting the carpet. ‘Is he going to be OK?’

‘They don’t know yet. He left a note, though. It said, “Lorne, I’m sorry.”’

Zoë leaned back in the chair, her hands resting on her thighs, her eyes closed. She felt the long, hard drag of the past few days hanging on her.

‘Zoë?’

She dropped her chin. Opened one eye and locked it on him. ‘What?’

He scratched his head, glanced at the whiteboard, then back at her. ‘Nothing,’ he said. ‘Nothing. Just thought you should know.’

14

Sally took a long time to go back to sleep after the dream. It seemed she’d slept only minutes before Steve’s alarm was going off. He had a meeting to attend, he’d told her, in London. He hadn’t said what, but they both knew it was with Mooney. To get the money. He showered and dressed while Sally lay in bed, trying to get rid of the dregs of the dream. He didn’t eat breakfast, but walked around anxiously, drinking a mug of coffee, hunting for his keys and his sat nav. He told Sally not to call him, he’d call her.

She sat at the window in her dressing-gown and watched the car pull left out of the driveway, which led away from the lane along a narrow track into the woods. It was down there, in true Famous Five style, that they’d dug a hole under the trunk of a tree and buried David’s teeth and ring in a tin. She waited at the window until, twenty minutes later, Steve’s car reappeared from the woods and sailed past the drive. Yes. He was going to see Mooney. He was going to get the money. And tomorrow he was going to America to get his other business finished. He was good at keeping things contained, she thought. He had to be, with his job. She envied that. He had no idea what it was like in her head at the moment. The mess and the confusion. The awfulness of being interviewed yesterday by Zoë.

There was a pile of dead brushwood that she’d collected back in December and hadn’t got round to burning. During the winter it had become wet and rotten, but over the last few days the high, bright sunshine had dried it out. She didn’t have to be at work until lunchtime, and she didn’t want to stay in the cottage thinking about Steve going away tomorrow, or about the curious light in Zoë’s eyes when she had said, ‘Why are you nervous, Sally?’, so she pulled on jeans and wellingtons and assembled the things she needed to make a bonfire. In the garage she found the can of paraffin they’d used to burn David’s belongings and all their bloodied clothes. Her old gardening gloves were in the greenhouse. They had been sitting on the window-sill for months and had dried into stiff leather claws. She had to crack and soften them before they’d slip on to her hands.

The place they’d had the fire five nights ago was still black and grey with ash. There was a screw or a nail from something, she wasn’t sure what, embedded in the soil. She pushed it further into the earth with her toe, then piled the brushwood on top of it, going back and forth across the garden, until there was lichen on her clothes and a long trail of debris across the lawn where she’d walked. The paraffin was easier to manage than she’d expected. As she worked some of the resolve she’d felt the other night in the car came back to her. She could do things. She could do this on her own. She could keep going as if nothing had happened. She could maybe even do some research and make a start on the thatch – wouldn’t that be something! She could be as strong as Zoë. She watched the embers lift off, borne on the oily flame tips, watched them take to the air and whisk away to the fields, leaving grey speckles on the new skin of green. When the fire had reached its peak and was starting to die a little, she turned away to get a rake to keep it all together and saw a car sitting in the driveway behind her.

She hadn’t heard it over the roar and crackle of the flames. It was blue and beaten up and she recognized it from yesterday. In the driver’s seat – as if Sally had magicked her there – was Zoë, in a white T-shirt and a leather jacket, a beanie pulled down over her mad splay of red hair. Sally stared at her as she swung out of the car. The confidence of a cowboy. It must be so nice to be in that body, with those well-spaced legs, those capable arms. No clothes that felt too tight around the waist or old, frayed bras stretching and sagging.

Zoë looked serious as she came towards her. ‘Where’s Millie?’

‘At Julian’s. Why?’

‘Have you got time to talk?’

‘I’ve …’ She glanced at the can of paraffin. ‘I’ve got this to burn.’ She pushed her hair off her face with the back of her wrist. ‘Then I’ve got work.’

‘That’s OK. I won’t be long.’

‘I’ve got to wash all Millie’s school clothes too.’

‘Like I said, I won’t be long.’

Sally was silent for a moment. She looked out at the fields. She saw the lane that wound its way up to the motorway. Steve would be at Victoria by now. ‘What do you want to talk about?’

‘Oh, this and that. Actually …’ she glanced at the cottage ‘… I’d like a cup of tea. If that’s not too much trouble.’

Sally kept her gaze on the fields, trying to guess what was coming. She’d never been any good at reading her sister. That was just the way it was. She put down her rake and went towards the cottage, pulling off her gloves. Zoë followed, stooping to get through the low doorway. While Sally boiled the kettle, scooped tea into the pot, Zoë wandered around the kitchen, picking up things from the shelves and examining them, stopping to peer at a painting Sally had done of a tulip tree. ‘So,’ she said, ‘this is where you live now.’ She studied a photo of Millie and the other kids – Sophie, Nial and Peter – pictured walking in a line across a ploughed field. ‘You going to tell me about it? What happened to Julian?’

‘There’s nothing to tell. He found a girlfriend. They’ve got a baby.’

‘Is Millie OK with it?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘I saw her the other day, Millie.’

‘I know.’

‘She looked well. She’s growing up fast. She’s very pretty. Is she well behaved?

‘Not really. No.’

Zoë gave a small smile and Sally stopped spooning tea.

‘What?’

‘Nothing.’

‘Is that what you came to talk about? Millie?’

‘In a way. There’s some news. Ralph Hernandez – her friend? He’s going to be OK but he tried to kill himself this morning.’

‘
Ralph?
’ She put the tin down with a clunk. ‘Oh, good Lord,’ she muttered. ‘It just doesn’t seem to stop.’

‘We’ve got someone talking to the headmaster at Kingsmead. I guess he’ll decide how to break the news to the kids.’

‘But is it Ralph’s way of …’ she tried to find the right word ‘… his way of
admitting
that he had something to do with Lorne?’

‘Some people think so.’

Sally lowered her eyes and put the lid back on the tea tin. She’d never met Ralph, but she knew all about him. She pictured him tall and dark. So, then, a suicide attempt. Another thing for Millie to carry. As if this household didn’t have enough weighing on it. She cut slices of an orange-iced almond cake she’d made at the weekend in an optimistic attempt to cheer herself up. She got out plates, napkins, forks, and had turned to the fridge for the milk when behind her Zoë said, ‘But that’s not really why I’m here.’

She stopped then, her hand on the fridge door, her back to the room. Not moving. David, she thought. Now you’re going to ask me about David. You’re so clever, Zoë. I’m no match for you. Her head drooped so her forehead was almost touching the fridge. Waiting for the axe to fall. ‘Oh,’ she said quietly. ‘Then why are you
really
here?’

There was a moment’s silence. Then behind her Zoë said quietly, ‘To apologize, I suppose.’

Sally stiffened slightly. ‘To … I beg your pardon?’

‘You know – about your hand.’

She had to swallow hard. It was the last thing. The very last thing … The accident with her hand hadn’t been referred to by anyone in the Benedict family since the day it had happened, nearly thirty years ago. To mention it was like saying the name of the devil aloud. ‘Don’t be silly,’ she managed to say. ‘There’s nothing to apologize about. It was an accident.’

‘It wasn’t an accident.’

‘But it was. An accident. And all a long time ago. Really, so long ago we hardly need to go back and—’

‘It wasn’t an accident, Sally. You know it, I know it. We’ve spent nearly thirty years pretending it didn’t happen, but it did. I pushed you off that bed because I hated you. Mum and Dad knew it wasn’t an accident too. That’s why we got sent to separate schools.’

‘No.’ Sally closed her eyes, rested her fingers on the lids and tried hard to keep the facts straight. ‘We got sent to separate schools because I wasn’t clever enough for yours. I failed the test.’

‘You could hardly hold the damn pen, probably, because your finger was broken.’

‘I
could
hold the pen. I didn’t get into the school because I was stupid.’

‘Don’t talk bullshit.’

‘It’s not bullshit.’

‘Yes, it is. And you know it.’

There was a long, hard choke wanting to come up from Sally’s stomach. She struggled to keep it under control. Finally, and with an immense effort of will, she opened her eyes and turned. Zoë was standing awkwardly on the other side of the table. There were red patches on her cheeks as if she was ill.

‘I need to make amends, Sally. Everyone does. If we want to live well in the present we need to face the failings of our past.’

‘Do we?’

‘Yes. We have to. We have to make sure we … make sure we
connect
to other people. Be sure we never forget that we’re part of a bigger pattern.’

Sally was silent. It sounded so weird, words like that coming out of Zoë’s mouth. She’d never thought of her sister as connected to other people. She was something quite out on her own. A lone planet. She needed nothing. No people. It was what Sally envied most, maybe.

‘Yeah, well.’ Zoë cleared her throat. Raised a dismissive hand. ‘I’ve said my piece, but now I’d better go. Villains to catch. Kittens to rescue from trees. You know how it is.’

And she was gone, out of the kitchen, out of the cottage, striding across the gravel, spinning her keys on her hands. She didn’t look back as she drove out on to the lane so she didn’t see Sally watching her from inside the kitchen. Didn’t see that she didn’t move for several minutes afterwards. A passer-by, if there had been any passers-by in that remote place, would have thought she was frozen there. A fuzzy white face on the other side of the leaded panes.