Hanging Hill (33 page)

41

The rain had gone and the clouds had cleared but the sun was almost down now, the liquid orange light dissolving around the houses and churches on the hills above Bath. It was cold. Sally pulled her duffel coat around herself and watched Zoë come down the path from the Woods’ house. She had her hood up but she’d taken off the sunglasses and her face was naked in the twilight. The bruises and swelling had got worse in the last two hours, yet somehow she didn’t look broken any more. It was as if something in her had mended.

She got inside the car and slammed the door. ‘You OK?’

‘Yes.’

‘Good. You can drive now. Go up to the main road and turn left so we stay close to the canal. I’ll tell you where to stop.’

While Sally started the engine and pulled out of the drive into the evening traffic, Zoë took off her jacket and rummaged in the pockets. She placed a plastic bag on her lap and unravelled an orange scarf on top of it. Then she fumbled inside the jacket again, pulled out a tiny Ziplock bag, and opened it. Inside there was a condom, filled with semen.

‘Oh, God,’ Sally muttered.

‘Well, don’t look if you can’t handle it.’

‘I can handle it. I can.’

‘Put the heater on.’

Sally turned it on full and concentrated on the traffic, glancing from time to time at her sister, who, biting her lip with concentration, was undoing the condom and carefully distributing the contents across the scarf. She folded the scarf and rubbed it together. Then she placed it on the carrier bag on the floor near the heater.

‘Disgusting.’ She returned the condom to the Ziplock bag, and used wet wipes to clean her hands. ‘Disgusting.’

She sat back in the seat, pushed her hair out of her eyes and ratcheted the seat back so she had room to stretch her legs out. She was so tall, Sally thought, and her legs were amazing – so long and capable. If Sally had been given legs like that to go through life with she’d have taken on the world in the same way Zoë had. She wouldn’t have shrunk back from it. She would have done all the things she’d done, and not regretted any of it. She wished she could explain it somehow – that she’d have been proud of everything. Even the pole-dancing. It seemed to her you needed real guts to do something like that.

‘It’s going to be OK,’ Zoë said suddenly. ‘It’s all going to be OK now.’

‘How do you know?’

She gave a small, wondering smile and shook her head. The headlights from the oncoming cars flickered across her face. ‘It just is.’

The traffic was heavy at this time of night. Even heading back into town along the canal the roads were congested – it took nearly half an hour to get to the bus stop Lorne had used the night she’d been attacked by Kelvin. The women used torches to navigate through the trees to the canal. The rush-hour affected not only the roads: the Kennet and Avon towpath, too, was a swift route out of the city and workers often used it as a cycle route, their suits in bags on their backs, but by the time the sisters arrived even that surge of traffic was over and the path was empty. There was no noise except the sounds of people cooking evening meals in the barges.

They walked quickly, heads down. The crime scene had been released two days ago and as they approached they could see a few soggy bunches of flowers lying in the wet grass, brown inside the cellophane. Zoë gave a quick glance around and stepped off the towpath, crunching into the undergrowth. Sally followed. They stopped a few yards from a natural clearing surrounded by dripping branches and nettles. A cross embroidered with flowers had been nailed to a tree up ahead. Sally stared at it. It would have been the Woods who had left it. The family with the hole in the heart.

‘This is going to get some CSI into a world of trouble.’ Zoë pulled the scarf out of her pocket. ‘Don’t like doing it.’

‘CSI?’

‘The crime-scene guys who are supposed to’ve searched this site. If it works I’m going to have some serious karma to pay back.’ She bit her lip and surveyed the clearing, then nodded back towards the path. ‘You stay here. Watch the canal. If anyone comes, don’t shout, just walk back in here to me. We’ll go out that way – between the trees. OK?’

‘OK.’

Sally stood, hands in her pockets, glancing up and down the path where the puddles reflected the light of the barges. Behind her, Zoë made her way through the undergrowth. She’d told a colleague in her team what they were doing. Ben, his name was. He didn’t know anything about what had happened to David Goldrab – that was always going to be a secret between the sisters – but he did know what Kelvin had done to Zoë and to Lorne. Sally felt a little better knowing someone else was helping; not that Zoë wasn’t capable all on her own. She looked back and saw her in the clearing, on tiptoe, draping the scarf over a tree branch. Totally capable. A few moments later she trudged back to Sally, wiping her hands as she came.

‘Anyone?’

‘No.’

‘I don’t think it’s going to rain again.’ Zoë looked up at the sky as they began to walk to the car. A little cloudy still. The moon was sending down a cool, diffuse light that gave everything monster outlines. ‘I really don’t.’ She fished in her pocket for her phone and pushed a key. ‘But I’ll need to tell Ben to make sure someone finds it ASAP.’

Sally kept walking, watching her sister out of the corner of her eye. She sensed Ben was more than just a trusted friend to her.

Then the call connected and she heard a man’s voice – Ben, she supposed – speaking excitedly. She heard the words ‘I was just about to call you,’ then something inaudible that made Zoë stop dead in her tracks. Sally paused too, and turned to her sister.

‘
Are you sure?
’ Zoë muttered into the phone. Her expression had changed completely. ‘A hundred per cent?’

‘What?’ Sally hissed. ‘What is it?’

Zoë flapped a hand at her to be quiet. She turned away and walked a few steps in the opposite direction, her finger in her ear so she could hear better what Ben was saying. She listened for a while, then muttered a few short questions. When she hung up, she came back at a trot, beckoning to Sally to get back to the car.

‘Zoë?’ she said, breaking into a jog alongside her. ‘What?’

‘Ben’s in Gloucester docks.’

‘And?’

‘Kelvin’s got a mate – a friend from the army who owns a barge moored there.’

‘A barge?’

‘We were looking for a barge right from the beginning. Thought there had been a houseboat here that night. This
has
to be the same one. It’s locked. Ben’s waiting for Gloucestershire Support Group boys to arrive and break in but …’

‘But what?’

‘He thinks there’s someone inside it. I think we’ve found him. I think we’ve found Kelvin.’

42

Sally drove fast up Lansdown Hill, Zoë in the passenger seat, drumming her fingers on the steering-wheel, glancing at the dashboard clock, calculating how long it would take to get to Gloucester. The traffic was thin now. It would take less than ten minutes to pick up Millie from the Sweetmans, then for Sally to drop Zoë off at her car. From there, with luck and a tailwind, Zoë could be at the docks within the hour.

Her mind was racing. Had the barge simply motored away, on the night of Lorne’s killing, along the canal system? She scrabbled in her memory – trying to decide if the Kennet and Avon canal connected into Gloucester. She couldn’t recall – but she could remember that the Gloucester docks were less than a mile from the red-light areas of Barton Street and Midland Road. She wondered if Kelvin’s ‘army friend’ had taken the photo of that pile of dead bodies in Iraq, and what –
what
– would be on that barge? Her hand kept drifting to the pocket where her phone was, wanting to call Ben, because it seemed to her that whichever way she pictured the barge she also saw blood drifting away from it in the water, swirling in oily curlicues. She wanted to tell him to be careful, to wait until she got there.

Sally indicated left and turned the car into Isabelle’s long driveway. Zoë’s phone rang, making her jump. She snatched it out of her pocket. It was Ben.

‘Are you OK?’

‘I’m fine.’ He sounded rushed. Excited. She could hear he was walking. Could hear traffic going past him as if he was on a busy city road. ‘But, Zoë, where are you? Have you left yet?’

‘I’m just picking up my niece. I’ll be back at my car in five and on my way.’

‘No. Don’t come to Gloucester.’

‘What?’

‘He’s not here.’

‘
Shit
.’ She sat back in her seat, deflated. She shot Sally a sideways glance as they bounced along the track. ‘Not there,’ she muttered. ‘Not there.’

‘How come?’

‘How come, Ben?’

‘The support team kicked the door in. His mate was on board, pissed as a parrot, but he hasn’t seen Kelvin in weeks. The barge hasn’t been anywhere near Bath, hasn’t left Gloucester in over a year – the harbour master confirmed that. So I went back to the phone thing. You know I couldn’t get anything about his mobile, needed superintendent authority on that. Well, someone at BT owes me a favour and—’

‘And?’

‘Burford made several calls to a number in Solihull this lunchtime. Turns out his sister lives there.’

‘Solihull? That’s about – what? A forty-minute drive if you take the—’

She broke off. Sally was slowing the car down and the headlights had picked out a vehicle, parked at an untidy angle up ahead in the driveway. A Land Rover.

‘That’s funny,’ Sally began, as Zoë leaned forward. ‘I thought Isabelle wasn’t—’

‘
Stop!
’

Sally slammed on the brakes. She stared out of the windscreen at the mud-covered Land Rover. Zoë made frantic motioning signals. ‘
Go back
.’ She swivelled her head to look out of the back window. ‘
Go on. Do it
.’

Sally slammed the gearstick into reverse and the car lurched back twenty yards, bumping over potholes and the grass verge. Ben’s voice was coming from the tinny little phone speaker. ‘
Zoë?
What’s happening?’

‘In there.
Put it in there
. Fast.’

Sally jumped the car back another ten yards, shoving it in behind a row of laurels. She switched the engine off, and killed the headlights. Zoë sat forward in her seat, peering down the driveway.

‘
Zoë?
’

She lifted the phone numbly, a ball of adrenalin clenched in her chest. ‘Yes.’

‘Are you OK?’

‘We’re OK,’ she said dully. ‘But listen. I really don’t think Kelvin’s in Solihull.’

43

The Sweetmans’ house was big – a Victorian monstrosity, with three floors and a turret on the roof. There were lights on in some of the downstairs rooms and a window on the ground floor stood open. Zoë leaned out of the open passenger window and took in every detail. ‘Isabelle doesn’t know Kelvin.’ She wound up the window and turned to her sister. ‘Does she?’

‘No.’

‘Well, that’s his Land Rover. That’s the registration the PNC gave me this afternoon.’

Sally fumbled for her phone. Her face had gone pale. ‘He doesn’t know Isabelle, but he does know Millie.’

‘He knows
Millie
? How come?’

She hit a fast-dial key and held it to her ear. ‘She was up at his house one afternoon.’

‘What the hell was she doing there?’

‘She was with me one day when I was working for David – but she knew Kelvin before. She and the others used to go up there. I think they used to torment him. Peter and Nial and Sophie and Millie. And Lorne too, probably, they all used to—’

She put her finger to her lip. The phone must have been answered. She opened her mouth to speak, then closed it. Shut her eyes and put her fingers against her forehead. ‘Uh, Millie,’ she said, after a moment or two. ‘It’s Mum. I’m at Nial’s. I need you to call me the moment you get this message. The moment.’ She hung up and dug her thumbnail into the space between her two front teeth. ‘The phone battery keeps running out. I’ve been meaning to replace it.’

Zoë was staring at Sally’s face. ‘Sally? Did you just tell me they used to
torment
Kelvin? And that Lorne went up there too?’

‘Yes. Why?’

She turned and gazed back at the Land Rover. What, she thought, if all along Lorne hadn’t met Kelvin through the clubs but through Millie’s gang and the days they used to go up to the cottage and torment him? She could imagine someone like Peter Cyrus doing it – she could imagine Kelvin’s rage.
All like her
. What if those words meant all the girls who’d been in that gang? The message in Sally’s car had been on the passenger side – where Millie would have been sitting, which meant it could have been directed at Millie, not Sally at all.

‘Shit,’ she hissed. ‘Call Nial.’

‘What?’ she said numbly. ‘Sorry?’

‘Just
do it
. Do it now.’

Shakily Sally scrolled through her contacts. She found the number and dialled.

‘Put it on speaker.’

She did, and the two women sat, heads together, looking at the display flashing. After four rings the call connected.

There was a muffled noise at the other end. Then, clearly, someone breathing. A word, so slurred it was impossible to hear it. A male voice.

‘
Nial?
’ Sally whispered, horrified. ‘
Nial?
’

More breathing. A noise. Like something soft being banged against glass. Then the phone went dead. Sally turned her eyes to her sister.

‘
What was that noise?
’ she murmured, her eyes watering with fear. ‘What the hell was that noise?’

‘Shit.’ Zoë slammed her hands on the dashboard. Her head dropped back against the seat. ‘Jesus,
shit
, I can’t believe this is happening.’ She turned in her seat and peered back up the track towards the main road. Gloucester was a good forty miles away. Ben wouldn’t be here for at least an hour. ‘OK. Let’s think.’ No way was she calling the police. She could just see Kelvin being hauled off by some Support Group officers and yelling out everything he knew about her and about Sally’s connection to Goldrab. She felt in her pockets. She’d left her expandable ASP baton in her car. All she had, tucked into her leather jacket, was the little CS gas spray canister issued to all officers. ‘Where do the family keep their tools?’

But the shock had hit Sally. Her face was white and she had started to shake. ‘
It means Kelvin’s got them
,’ she said, her voice almost lapsing into hysteria. ‘
Both of them
.’

‘No.’ Zoë shook her head. ‘It doesn’t mean that at all.’

‘
Yes, it does. You know it does. Millie’s not answering her phone. He’s done something to her. Call the police
.’

‘Sally.’ She grabbed her sister’s arm. ‘Keep it together. You know why I’m not calling the police. Ben’s on his way and we can do this. We can.’

‘Oh, God.’ She put her face in her hands. ‘Oh, God, I can’t.’

‘We
can
. You’ve got to listen. OK? We need tools. Where do I look?’

‘There’s a garage, but …’ She waved vaguely behind her. ‘In the boot. There’ll be something in there. Oh God, he’s going to kill her.’

Zoë got out of the car. What warmth had accumulated during the day now radiated up into the open sky, as if it wanted to reach the stars. It was freezing. Really and truly freezing. She left the car door wide open and went silently to the back, throwing cautious glances at the lights of the Sweetmans’ house shining through the trees. There wasn’t a sound. All she could hear in this lonely farm land was the vague hum of cars going by on the distant road. But what kept reverberating in her ears was the noise in the background of that phone call.
Thud thud thud
. What the hell had that been? She went through the contents of the boot quickly. A few DIY tools – a ball-pein hammer, a pair of long-handled shears and a chisel. A small axe.

‘Here.’ She grabbed the hammer for herself and carried the axe back to Sally, who took it dumbly, staring down at it as if she had no idea where it had come from or how it had got there.

‘Call me on your phone. On my work number.’

She did as she was told, trembling. Zoë scooped the work phone out of her pocket and when it began to ring hit the
Accept call
button. ‘Don’t end the call, just leave the line open. That’s how we’re going to communicate.’ She pushed the phone back into the pocket of her gilet. ‘Now listen to me. Concentrate. Absolutely no chance Isabelle’s back? Or her husband?’

‘No. He’s in Dubai and she’s – I don’t know. I don’t know, I can’t remember, but miles away.’

‘Where’s the main living area?’

‘In the back. The kitchen.’

‘What’s on the next floor?’

‘I d-don’t know. Four bedrooms, I think. The front one on the left is Nial’s and that’s Sophie’s on the right. There’s a bathroom in between them.’ She looked woodenly at the axe and at the phone in her hand. Still linked to Zoë’s. ‘What’s going to happen, Zoë? What’re we going to do?’

‘I’m going to go into the house. We keep the line open. Don’t, whatever you do, speak to me. No matter what. But do listen. If it sounds like I’m in trouble, all bets are off. Kill this call and get straight on to the police. It’s the only way – we’ll deal with the fallout later.’

‘Oh, Christ.’ Sally shook her head. Her teeth were chattering loudly. ‘Oh Christ oh Christ oh Christ.’