Hanging Hill (34 page)

44

Over her two years in uniform, and then on occasion in CID, Zoë had done hundreds of searches, not knowing what to expect. She’d lost count of the stairwells she’d crept down, CS gas at the ready, the car boots she’d clicked open, not knowing what might explode out at her. She’d always been rock steady. Not even a waver. Even when a crack addict in St Jude’s had jumped out at her in a multi-storey car park waving a syringe in her face and screaming about the devil and Jesus and police cunts and
what does your pussy smell like, beeatch?
it hadn’t wobbled her. Tonight, though, she felt as if she was coming face to face with God. Or with the devil. As if the whole sky was pressing down on her, squeezing the air out of her lungs.

The first thing she noticed when she got close to the house was that the front door was open. Just a crack, a tiny slice of the hall carpet visible. She dropped to a crouch with her back to the front wall. Somehow she’d pictured the house locked and shuttered, not open, like an invitation. She kept thinking of that awful sound, like meat being slapped against a wall.

Tentatively she craned her neck and peered round the door. She could see an umbrella stand, a table. She reached out and pushed the door open. It swung back on its hinges. The hallway was empty. Nothing moved inside. The only noise was the electronic hum of a fridge from the last doorway on the right, where Sally had said the kitchen was.

She hooked out the phone and whispered into it, ‘Don’t answer this, Sally. I’m at the front door, can’t hear anything inside. I’m going to go in now. I’ll be on the ground floor. Start counting slowly. I’ll speak to you again before you get to three hundred. If I don’t, make that call.’

She returned the phone to her pocket, straightened and stood in the doorway. Trying to put height and weight into her shoulders. It wasn’t how you should enter premises, but police school and uniform seemed a lifetime ago and she had to struggle to recall the routine. She held the CS gas at arm’s length and took two steps into the hallway. Waited. Took two more. She stood at the door to the living room, put her head round it, gave it a quick glance, snapped her head back. Nothing. Just a lot of chairs and tables sitting in a silent circle, as if they were having a quiet conversation in the absence of their owners. Then the music room – empty too.

She closed the doors – that much she did recall from training:
close the rooms you’ve cleared
– and continued down the hallway, checking, throwing switches, closing doors. By the time she got to the back of the house the ground floor was blazing with light. She lifted the phone to her mouth. ‘Nothing so far,’ she murmured. ‘I’m going upstairs. Start counting again.’

The stairs creaked as she climbed, even though she tried to place her feet on the edges, where the boards were supported. This was an old house – it wasn’t neat and painted and scrubbed and nailed down. It had nicks and bumps and the bruises of a lifetime. On the landing, a paper Chinese lantern hanging from the ceiling moved slowly from side to side as she disturbed the air. There were six doors. She worked through them methodically, pushing the ones that were nearly closed with her toe, holding up the CS gas as they swung open. In each one she left the light burning, the door closed. It wasn’t until she came to the last bedroom, Nial’s, that she found any sign of Millie. There, heaped on the bed, were a pair of girl’s trainers and a sweater with Millie’s name stitched on the label inside. She picked it up and went back downstairs.

The kitchen was the sort of middle-class kitchen you saw a lot in Bath, with cabinets painted a dull leaden green and lots of garden flowers in plain, clouded-glass bottles on every window-sill. Double doors led outside to a garden that was invisible behind the reflection of the room. On the bleached oak island in the middle sat two school rucksacks, the name ‘Kingsmead’ on them. A tin marked ‘Cakes’ was open, a solitary cupcake inside, and there were two coffee cups in the sink. The tap dripped on them. A plinking punctuation to the silence.

‘You can come in now,’ she said, into her phone. ‘No one here.’

She went to the table, where two opened cans of Stella Artois sat. She lifted one and shook it. Beer sloshed around on the inside. The drinks had just been left. Like the meals on the
Mary Celeste
. She saw a small door by the fridge, and when she tapped it with her foot it opened to reveal a utility room, with a sink, a washing-machine and the usual clutter – mops and buckets in the corner, a pair of secateurs on a hook on the wall. The door that led out of the room to the back caught her attention. It was ajar.

She went to it and pushed it open. There was a step down on to a stone patio and beyond it a wide black expanse that must be the lawn. It was surrounded by trees, the sky blocked by their huge inky crowns, the branches moving almost imperceptibly against the blue clouds. She stood for a moment in the doorway, listening to the night. The gentle
shush-shush
of the leaves. The
plink-plink
of the tap dripping behind her.

This house wasn’t far from Pollock’s Farm – in fact, the garden must back right on to it. She’d been called out here enough times to know. The last time had been in a thick autumn mist, the day old man Pollock’s body had been hauled out by men who’d been wearing protective suits, he was so decayed. She’d vowed never to come back to that godforsaken place. It wasn’t somewhere you’d want to be at any time, let alone on a night like tonight.

She turned back to the kitchen and her foot hit something. Looking down she saw a phone. She crouched and picked it up. It was a black Nokia. She hit the on switch. Nothing happened. The battery was dead. She turned it over and saw the casing was cracked.

‘Zoë?’

She jumped. Sally was standing in the kitchen doorway, her face white. Her hands were trembling. She was holding the axe.

‘It’s OK,’ Zoë said. ‘There’s no one here.’

Sally’s eyes darted around the utility room. Her jaw was clenched tight. She looked like she might snap in half.

‘Put the axe down,’ Zoë said. ‘Put it down.’

Slowly she lowered it. ‘That’s hers,’ she said, staring at the sweater Zoë was holding. ‘It’s the only one she’s got. She’ll be freezing without it.’

Zoë held the phone out. ‘And this?’

Sally leaned over to peer at it. She gave a small twitch when she saw what it was and closed her eyes. She put her hand out to the wall, as if she was going to faint.

‘Sally?
Sally?
Come on – keep it together.’

45

Sally blinked. She saw her sister’s face close to hers. Behind her the little utility room was swaying, the colours bleary. She kept remembering Millie on the tarot card, her face, smudged and smeared and ruined. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said, and her voice sounded miles away. ‘I’m sorry. I got it all so wrong.’

‘Call Nial.’

Isabelle had been right that the tarot was a warning, but it hadn’t been about Jake. It had been a warning about this: all along she’d been warned about tonight.

‘Hey,’ Zoë hissed. ‘Did you hear what I said? Call him.’

‘Yes. Yes.’ She pulled out her phone and tried to dial but her fingers didn’t seem to work. They seemed to be miles away – miles and miles away, as if her arms were very long.

‘Give it to me.’

Zoë grabbed the phone, put it on speaker and dialled Nial’s number. The ringing was distant and lonely. Like part of the invisible dark world out there, funnelling through this tiny channel to reach them. This time there was no answer. It rang four times. Five. Then it went to answerphone.

Zoë shook her head. She took the phone off speaker and dialled again, this time putting it in her pocket and holding it tight against her hip. She took a step out on to the patio, her eyes fixed on the trees.

‘What is it?’ Sally murmured. ‘What’s going on?’

Zoë put a finger to her mouth. ‘Listen.’

Sally came to stand next to her sister and listened to the breathless night. Now she could hear it – a phone ringing faintly in the darkness. It was coming from somewhere far beyond the trees at the bottom of the garden. But just as she thought she’d got an exact direction on it, the ringing stopped. The answerphone again. Quickly Zoë scrabbled the phone out of her pocket and dialled again. The ghostly ringing came again, floating up from the darkness.

‘Pollock’s Farm,’ Zoë murmured.

Sally’s heart sank even lower. She thought about the acres of abandoned land. The decaying farm machinery. The drop and the deserted house at the bottom of it where a man had lain rotting for week after week. ‘God, no,’ she murmured. ‘That’s where they are. Isn’t it?’

‘Come on. Let’s go.’

They checked in the garage and found a huge dragon lamp with a rubberized handle, like the one Steve had bought Sally – it seemed a million years ago. Zoë switched it on to check the battery was charged – it sent a blinding white circle on to the wall, making both women squint. She used a canvas strap to loop it around her neck, and then they went around collecting everything they could carry. Zoë had the hammer in her belt, CS gas in her back pocket, and a large mallet – the type for knocking in fence posts – in her right hand. Sally carried a chisel in the pocket of her coat and the axe in one hand. In the other she had a child’s windup torch – the sort that worked on a dynamo. She couldn’t stop her teeth chattering. Her bones felt like water – for anything she’d just stop here and curl up on the ground and pretend none of it was happening. But when you couldn’t bear the thoughts, the only thing to do was to act. To keep moving.

They set off along the path towards the farm. Zoë went in front, her back straight, the big torch beam flittering through the trees that bent around the path, the branches overhead. To the left this forest stretched as far as Hanging Hill, and to the right it continued for almost a mile, then on the outskirts of Bath began to give way to houses, playing fields, a rugby club, its spectral white goal posts rising above the hedge line. As the trees thinned out, the women stopped. Zoë switched off the dragon light and they stood in silence surveying what lay in front of them. The fields were paler than the woods, the dried remains of the dead crops like a mist hovering above the land. Here and there were dotted the shadows of broken machinery and burned-out car carcasses. At the far end the dark shapes of the old decaying silage bales were outlined against the horizon, silent and still as sleeping beasts. Beyond them, invisible to the uninitiated, was the drop into the quarry.

Zoë fished out the phone and dialled the number again. This time the noise was much louder. There wasn’t any question where it was coming from. The other side of the silage. The quarry where Pollock’s house was.

46

The moon broke free from its cloud cover as they crossed the farm and for a moment it was so bright they seemed to be under a giant spotlight. Two lonely figures casting long blue shadows where they walked, feet shushing the dead corn. They came through the gate at the top of the quarry and slowly, using their hands to steady themselves against the trees, joined the zigzag path, which meandered through thick trees down the cliff edge. At the foot of the path they paused. The valley floor stretched away, serene and motionless. To their right was the house. It was in darkness, but the moonlight picked out its shape and reflected off the broken windows in the top floor.

Zoë dialled Nial again. There was a pause, then it clicked through. This time the noise was so close it made them both jump. It was coming from the house, floating out across the frigid air like a plea. It rang five, six times, and went into answerphone.

‘Come on,’ she mouthed. ‘Come on.’

They went, single file, heads lowered. The house stood with its back just a few yards from the quarry wall – as if it had fallen from the top and landed there, miraculously upright. It was rendered and roofed, but since Zoë was last here it had been used by the meths addicts and now it had the feel of something built by the army as a training range, with its doorways stripped to the brick, a great pool of weed-pocked rainwater on the cracked concrete it stood on. Everything had been covered with graffiti – even the quarry wall behind it. There were a few grilles on the windows, but most had been wrenched off and scattered on the ground to rot.

The women got to the side of the house, and squatted, their backs to the filthy wall, while Zoë dialled the number again. They held their breath, listening. The ringing was coming from inside the house, at ground level, somewhere near the back. Zoë cut the call and pushed the phone into her pocket. She held her breath and listened again. This time she heard something else, coming from the same place inside the house. The noise, the rhythmic noise they’d heard on the phone. Like something soft being banged against glass.

She wiped her forehead. ‘Christ. Christ.’

‘Hey,’ Sally whispered suddenly. ‘We’ve got to keep going.’

Zoë shot her a look. Sally’s eyes were clear, and her face was remarkably composed. Zoë got some strength from her expression. She took a moment, then nodded. She picked up the hammer and torch. ‘Come on.’

Together they moved along the edge of the house, stopping at the corner, just ten inches from the front door. Zoë leaned her head back against the wall, took a few deep breaths, then swivelled, put her head into the doorway. She jerked back.

‘Anything?’

She shook her head. ‘But I can’t see properly,’ she murmured. ‘It’s too dark. I’ve got to use this.’ She licked her lips, looked down and flicked the ready switch on the dragon light. ‘It’ll blind anyone in there. But only for about twenty seconds. Then they’re going to know we’re here. Are you ready for that?’

Sally pressed her eyelids down with her fingers. She was paler than a ghost, but she nodded. ‘Yes. If you are.’

They turned into the entrance, Zoë holding up the light, shining it into the house, and the two women stared in, taking a mental snapshot of what lay in front of them. The hallway ran from the front door to the back, with two doors opening from it on the left. The place was completely stripped; only some parts of the wall still had chunks of plaster. There were the remains of a carpet in the hallway, but it had become so rotten and wet it looked more like mud and was dotted with puddles. This must have been the site of many a party – empty bottles and beer cans littered the place and something big lay next to the back door. At first Zoë took it for a bundled-up carpet, or clothes, half covered with leaves, but then she saw it was a human being. His shirt was half lifted from his back to reveal long grazes that had leaked blood into the seat of his jeans.

She switched off the light and quickly flattened herself against the wall. Sally did the same and they stood there, breathing hard, closing their eyes and going back over what they’d seen.

‘It’s him,’ Sally whispered. ‘Nial.’

‘Yes.’

He’d been lying on his side, his back to them so they couldn’t see his face, but it was definitely him. Those injuries on his back could only have come from falling down the slope. Maybe with the last of his strength he’d crawled into the house through the back door. She switched the light on again, twisted back into the doorway and shone the torch on the two doorways to check Kelvin wasn’t standing there. Then she moved the beam to the body at the end of the hall and saw it move slightly.

‘Nial?’ She cupped her hand around her mouth and hissed down the hallway. ‘Nial? You OK? Where’s Millie?’

Nial’s hand lifted. Seemed to be trying to wave at them. It could have been a wave of acknowledgement, it could have been a warning, or it could have been him trying to direct them to Millie. It stayed in the air for a second or two, then collapsed. His leg twitched, he tried to roll sideways to face them, but the effort was too much. He gave up and just lay there, breathing slowly, his thin ribs rising and falling.

Thud. Thud. Thud
, came the noise, from the second doorway.
Thud. Thud. Thud
.

Two lines of sweat broke from under Zoë’s hair. It was the room where old man Pollock had been found.

Thud. Thud. Thud
.

She nearly lost it then. She shrank out of sight and stood with her back to the wall, panting, wanting to run away. She put her hands up to her face and tried to calm her breathing. Slowly. In and out. In and out. She’d held it together this long. She could do this. She could.

‘Zoë?’

A cool hand on her shoulder. She looked sideways. Sally was standing close to her. Her face calm, smooth. She reached down and gently prised the big torch from her sister’s stiff fingers.

‘It’s OK.’ She held Zoë’s eyes. ‘Really it’s OK. I’m OK. Not scared. Not at all.’