Hanging Hill (8 page)

‘I disagree.’

‘It’s a free world, Ben. And it’s good we disagree. As long as you remember to keep an open mind. Even Tracey Sunshine said that.’

‘Of course. Of course I will.’ He pushed back his immaculate cuff and checked his watch. ‘So, nine o’clock now. What’re you going to take?’

‘Well, I’m not going to be interviewing schoolboys, I can promise you that. I might do something really radical – like try to establish an investigation based on the evidence. You know – like we were trained? I might try to find out which barge that tarp came from.’ She pushed her chair back, got to her feet. ‘Or, even better, I’ll meet up with the liaison officer. Go and speak to the Wood family. You?’

‘Alice Morecombe, the friend on the phone. I’ve got to find out about that last conversation. And then …’

She raised her eyebrows at him. ‘And then?’

‘I’ll take some of MCIU up to Faulkener’s. Speak to all the boys in Lorne’s year – and everyone in the year above her too.’

She shook her head resignedly. ‘Does this mean we’re at war?’

‘Don’t be silly. We’re grown-ups. Aren’t we?’

She held his eyes. ‘I hope so, Ben. I really do.’ She looked at him for a bit longer, then checked her watch. ‘A drink tonight? Depending on how the day pans out?’

‘Sure.’ He gave a brief smile, then swivelled his computer screen round and began entering his password.

‘I’ll see you later, then?’ She watched his fingers on the keys. ‘About seven?’

‘Seven.’ He didn’t take his eyes off the computer. ‘Sounds perfect.’

14

Zoë would have driven the Harley anywhere – but the superintendent just hated the thought of her rolling up to interviews in her leathers, so for police business she used the car: the ancient Mondeo she’d got cheaply when the force had offloaded some of its fleet. The Woods lived out near Batheaston and to get there she had to drive past the exclusive Faulkener’s School where Ben had sent his team to interview the schoolkids. She slowed the Mondeo, peered up the rhododendron-lined driveway and saw all the marked and unmarked cars parked up. Ranks of them. Already she knew where this case was going: the superintendent was going to throw all the resources after Debbie Harry’s theories. Zoë could see all the swimming-against-the-tide that lay in her future.

She speeded up, passing the school, then almost as quickly slowed again. About a hundred yards ahead, pulled on to the kerb, there was a purple Mitsubishi Shogun jeep. It was a real number, tricked out like a pimp-mobile with clamped-on running-boards, angel-eye headlights and a bush snorkel. Sitting in it was a notorious piece of local pond life – Jake Drago, otherwise known as Jake the Peg, for some reason that eluded her. Skinny and always fidgeting, Jake the Peg had spent almost half his adult life inside, mostly for stupid brawls and drug-dealing. But for the last two years, people said, he’d got his act together, had found some way of staying on the straight. Zoë doubted it. She pulled the car over and got out, tucking her shirt into her jeans as she walked back along the pavement to him.

‘Hey.’ Jake got out of the car as she approached. He slammed the door, leaned back against it, folded his arms and gave her a long look up and down, taking in the high-heeled cowboy boots and the black shirt with the sleeves rolled up.

‘Hey, Jake.’ She stopped a pace away, smiled nicely. It was true what they said: he looked different. He’d cleaned up, had put on weight and muscle. He wore a tight white vest that his pumped-up pecs pushed against. His dark hair was cut short at the sides with the top gelled up. He was very tanned and oiled and, frankly, to her eyes, looked like he was on his way to a disco. ‘I see you haven’t learned much over the years. In the States you get out of a car like that when a cop comes along and you’re liable to get yourself shot. Here, you’re just liable to make me wonder if you’re hiding something in there. And then I’d have to search the car, or breathalyse you, and at that point it all gets really tedious.’

‘How do I know you’re a cop?’

‘Oh, please.’ She gave a laugh – a low, forced laugh – and looked around herself as if there might be someone to share the joke with. ‘Please. Don’t even go there. Let’s not demean ourselves.’

‘What do you want?’

‘What do I want? I want to look at your muscle car.’ She put a hand on the bonnet. ‘It’s totally mint, Peg. Suits you.’

‘I’m in a hurry.’

‘I saw. Sitting there in the morning sun. Saw you were in a hurry.’

He scowled. ‘This is starting to piss me off.’

She looked across at the entrance to the school with its big ornate gates and the unmarked police cars. You wouldn’t know what they were unless you were police yourself. ‘What’re you doing outside the school? Why’d you pick here to sit?’

He gave her a tight, twitchy look. Then he smiled, showing the glint of a diamond set in his front tooth. ‘I’m a perv. Didn’t you know? Watching all the girls in their little short skirts?’ He rubbed his thighs. ‘Fuck, but they make me hot. Make me think about things my probation officer says I didn’t ought to think about.’

‘Yeah, yeah, yeah – still taking me for an idiot after all these years. You’re not a nonce, Peggers. You’re a lowlife piece of turd that one day, God willing, the good citizens of Bath will scrape off the bottom of their shoes for ever – but you’re not a nonce. So what is it? You dealing to the spoiled little girls and boys in there?’

‘I told you – I was resting. Closing my eyes.’

‘You heard about the murder? That’s the sort of thing that gets around.’

‘Course I heard.’

‘You know when it happened?’

‘Yes. The night before last.’

‘And you know where?’

‘Over there.’ He nodded in the direction of the canal. ‘They found her down there, didn’t they?’

‘And you didn’t see anything?’

‘Me? Me? Nothing. Never saw a thing.’

‘You sure? I mean, I could have a rummage around in that disgusting pimped-up heap of shit you’re driving, you sad bastard, and take you in. Now, are you sure?’

‘I’m sure.’ He tucked his hands into his armpits and fixed his eyes on her chin. ‘A hundred per cent.’

‘It’s just, you know, I’m a woman so I’ve got a memory like an elephant, can never wipe that slate clean. Know what I’m saying? And the thing I will
never
forget about you, Peggie, is you lying to the police. Every time you get your arse hauled in you tell lies. Now – tell me. Did you see anything?’

He blinked at her. A line of sweat had started on his lip. He lowered his head and kicked at the dirt a little. ‘Dunno. I might’ve done. Might’ve seen her with one of the boys. Walking down there, near the canal.’

‘One of the
boys
? What do you mean, “one of the boys”?’

‘Schoolkid. They went into that wood over there.’

For a moment Zoë genuinely didn’t know what to say. She stared at the top of his head, gleaming and gelled, thinking that Debbie Harry would have loved to hear that come out of his mouth. To confirm her theory. But then Jake shifted and kicked the dirt some more and twitched and avoided her eyes, and suddenly she got it. He hadn’t seen Lorne with anyone – he hadn’t seen a thing. He’d been sitting out here all day, dealing to the pupils of Faulkener’s, and probably some of them had already told him that the police were questioning all the boys. He wanted her off his case, so he was just parroting back what he thought she wanted to hear.

She sighed. Swung her keys round on her index finger. Another unmarked car had just pulled into the driveway of the school. Swimming against the tide.

‘Pleasant though it always is to pass the time of day with you, Peggie,’ she said nicely, ‘I’ll let you get back to work now. I mean, you’re going to need the money, what with those rear indicators being illegal and the fines I’m going to slap on you if I see you hanging around here again.’

15

The Woods’ house was set in gardens that rambled for almost an acre up from the canal towpath. The narrow driveway led through an imposing grove of redwood trees, with well-tended lawns stretching away on either side, then clusters of outbuildings and greenhouses. A ride-on mower sat in the sun and a wheelbarrow full of dead bindweed had been abandoned on the hard-standing. The house itself was comparatively small and unprepossessing – a thirties pebble-dashed box, neat and well maintained but unimaginative. A uPVC conservatory had been added at the back, inside which sat floral armchairs and a dining table covered with a white linen tablecloth.

Zoë parked and walked around the side of the house. The liaison officer the family had been assigned had warned the Woods of Zoë’s visit. He’d told them she had no news, that she was coming to ask questions, so they wouldn’t all gather to stare expectantly at her. Lorne’s father was in the garden and didn’t even look up when she passed. He wore a swagman’s hat, complete with dangling corks, a Singha beer T-shirt, and shorts. He was using a chainsaw to cut a felled birch into logs, and although he must have seen her, he kept his back turned to the house. According to the paperwork he was a project manager in the construction business. Zoë guessed he wasn’t of the right social stratum to be down the boozer mounting posses to lynch whoever it was who’d killed his daughter. But he’d be picturing it nevertheless. He’d be having intellectual arguments with himself, huge battles of reason, about the role and logic of the justice system. About forgiveness and humanity. He’d be cutting the log and imagining it was Lorne’s killer he was hacking into.

From the patio bench a tall, sorrowful-looking lad watched her approach. He sat with his elbows on his knees and was jiggling slightly, as if he was ready to jump up at any moment. He had a shock of sandy hair, and the chinos and sweatshirt he wore seemed to have been slept in. This must be Lorne’s brother, driven home overnight from his university in Durham. He gave her an embarrassed nod, held up his hand to indicate the front door, then went back to his nervous jiggling.

The door was open a crack. Zoë pushed it further and found herself in a hallway filled with framed photos. Horse photos: gymkhanas, ponies clearing jumps, difficult ones – triple oxers and cross-country walls. A young Lorne grinning from under a riding hat, arms round the neck of a black pony, its browband bristling with rosettes.

‘Hello?’

‘In here,’ came a voice from the end of the corridor. Zoë continued on and found, in the kitchen, the liaison officer sitting hunched over a computer, and Mrs Wood, standing at the worktop, scratching furiously in a small notebook. She was dressed in corduroy trousers and a Joules Elephant Polo T-shirt, a mass of curly hair tied back from her face. The moment she turned to face her Zoë noted two things. The first was that Mrs Philippa Wood had once been Miss Philippa Snow and had been at Zoë’s boarding-school nearly twenty years ago. The second was that Mrs Wood really hadn’t accepted her daughter was dead. She was smiling grimly, a pragmatic expression on her face, as if she was determined to get through this visit from the police as soon as possible.

‘Pippa Wood.’ She gave Zoë’s hand a firm shake. If she recognized her she didn’t say anything. ‘Coffee? It’ll take just a moment.’

Zoë exchanged a glance with the liaison officer, who gave a slow nod, as if to say, ‘I told you so. It hasn’t reached her yet.’

‘Please. Black, with two sugars.’ She folded her arms and leaned against the counter top, watching her switch on the kettle and get down mugs from the cupboards. ‘I know you spoke to the police yesterday, Mrs Wood, and the day before that when Lorne went missing. I don’t want you to think we’re hassling you. I just wanted to see if anything had come up for you overnight. Anything you recalled – anything in your statement you wanted to change or add to.’

‘Not really.’ She held out an opened biscuit tin containing brownies and sponge fingers. Zoë hadn’t seen sponge fingers in years. She took one. Pippa snapped the lid back on. ‘She got home from school at one – they do a half-day on Saturday. She got changed and went into town. Completely normal.’

‘She did that often?’

‘Yes. She liked to go shopping. Some of the places in the centre stay open till six, even later.’

‘And she didn’t say she was meeting anyone?’

‘No.’ She got milk from the fridge. ‘She liked to be on her own.’

‘What was she shopping for?’

‘The usual. Clothes. Window-shopping, of course, because I don’t let her have money just to waste. She thought she was going to London to be a model – any money I’d given her she’d have squandered on that pipedream. We’re trying to teach her the value of money, what’s a sensible spend and what isn’t, but with Lorne, it’s in one ear and out the other. Her brother, on the other hand …’ She shook her head, as if life was a mystery to her. ‘Isn’t it amazing how two children, the same genes, can turn out so differently?’

‘What’s a “sensible” spend?’

Pippa scrutinized Zoë, as if she was wondering whether this was a trick question. ‘Well, not clothes, of course. At least, not the sort of clothes she wants. Something practical, maybe.’ She gave the leg of her own trousers a shake as an illustration. ‘But not these things she goes for, covered in glitter – they fall apart after one wash.’

At school Zoë and Pippa had been in different years, but now Zoë was remembering something of her reputation. Super sporty, captain of the hockey team, crazy about horses. And as hard as nails.

‘Did she have a horse?’

‘Not any longer. She did have, but she wouldn’t look after him. I’d have kept him, but I didn’t send him out to be broken in, did it myself, so he was never going to be happy with me on his back and he was too small, anyway. Now it’s just the mare and the five-year-old.’

Zoë nibbled thoughtfully at the sponge finger, her hand cupped under it so as not to drop the sugar crusting on the kitchen floor. There had been a time years ago when she’d done a routine enquiry on a twelve-year-old girl who’d been thrown and trampled by her horse, and was lying in a coma in Intensive Care. The mother had been in tears during the interview. But in tears for what might happen to the horse, not to her daughter. All that came out of her mouth was: ‘It wasn’t his fault. He got scared – she shouldn’t have had him on the road. It wasn’t his fault.’ Zoë licked her fingers carefully, then leaned a little way out of the kitchen door and peered at the staircase. ‘Is her room up there?’

‘There’ve been some teams in it already. They took her computer. They left about an hour ago.’

‘Could I have a look?’

‘Of course you can. You’ll forgive me if I don’t come with you.’

Zoë carried the coffee into the hallway and went slowly up the stairs, past all the gymkhana photos. It stuck in her head, that line:
Any money I’d given her she’d have squandered on that pipedream
. It was years since she’d been living at home with her parents, and all the pain that had entailed, but the memory came back to her as sharp as cold air. Never quite measuring up. Wanting nothing more than to escape.

Lorne’s room – with a poster of the Sugababes Blu-tacked on the door – was opposite the top of the stairs, next to the family bathroom. The persistent buzz of Mr Wood’s chainsaw was more muffled here. Zoë pushed opened the door, went inside and stood for a while, taking in the room.

Lorne had been privileged – Faulkener’s would have set the Woods back twelve to fifteen grand a year, probably, and here there were little giveaways of her lifestyle that pinned her as a cut above the ordinary: a framed photo of her in front of the Sydney Opera House, another of her dressed in a strapless ballgown, débutante smile on her face, age all of thirteen, Zoë guessed. Aside from that, what was most distressing about the room was its sheer normality. Exactly the sort of teenage girl’s bedroom that would be replicated in hundreds of other homes across Bath. No pictures of horses; instead it was posters of girl bands dressed in what looked like lingerie. On the wall next to the window a corkboard was covered with photos – Lorne pictured on a climbing wall, tongue out to the camera, delighted grin on her face; Lorne with three other girls crammed into a photo booth; Lorne in a floaty white dress, a flower circlet on her ankle; Lorne in a strawberry-design swimsuit – the epitome of every teenage boy’s fantasy. Her hair changed too, from one shot to the next, from bright blonde, cut in a fringe, to Goth, sullen black, complete with a magenta streak in the fringe. Zoë wondered how that had gone down at Faulkener’s School. At her boarding-school hair dye would have been an expellable offence, but that school’s speciality had been turning out no-nonsense girls. Like her. And like Pippa Wood downstairs.

She put down her cup, pulled a pair of gloves out of her pocket, put them on and opened a drawer. Underwear, in a bundle, perhaps from Lorne’s own untidiness or perhaps because the police team had been untidy – knickers to one side, bras to the other. Another drawer had school socks and tights, another hair accessories, hundreds of them bursting out. She went to a small multicoloured chest of drawers and peered into the top drawer. More underwear. A stack of red gymkhana rosettes. Perhaps Lorne hadn’t been allowed to throw them away so she’d done the next best thing and kept them well out of sight.

Out of sight
…

She straightened and scanned the room. When Lorne had gone missing the OIC had come in here with a Support Group team looking for clues to her disappearance. Zoë had read through his notes and there hadn’t been anything much. But a girl like Lorne? Tension between her and her mother? There had to be something the OIC had missed. She sat on the bed, her hands resting on her lap, and concentrated on summoning up the feeling she’d had earlier. The sudden, shuddering connection to her own teenage self. If this had been
her
room, where would
she
have hidden things?

At boarding-school the dorms had been small – just four to a room. There had been a cupboard stretching the length of one wall and each girl had been allocated a section in it for her clothes. They had also been given a small bedside table each. Not much scope for hiding things you didn’t want others to see. Zoë had found a way, though. Her eyes trailed to Lorne’s bedside table, which was piled with magazines. She pushed herself off the bed, lay down on the floor, and reached a hand up under the table. She found just the smooth wood of the base. She got up, moved to the desk and did the same. Nothing. She went to the wardrobe. This time when she pushed her fingers underneath she found, taped to the base, a solid, block-shaped object encased in a plastic bag.

She peeled away the tape, removed the package and sat on the bed with it on her lap. Inside the plastic bag she found a small book, complete with a lock in the shape of a heart, a key in it. On the front of it were scrawled the words: ‘Mum, if you’ve found this then I can’t stop you reading it. But don’t forget that you will have betrayed my trust.’ Zoë smiled for the little human part of Lorne that had just peeped out. More human than Pippa downstairs, still fretting that her daughter wasn’t remotely interested in horses.

Zoë opened the book, and leafed through the pages. Lorne had pasted the pages with paper cut-out flowers, and little stickers in the shape of eyes that blinked and jiggled when you moved them. Most of the earlier dates had no entry, but for the last few weeks it seemed Lorne had become an inveterate scribbler. Every page was crammed to the margins with notes in a tiny, barely legible scrawl. Zoë took her reading glasses from the breast pocket of her shirt, carried the book to the window, where the light was good, and read.

Most of the stuff was predictable teenage angst. Every day Lorne had recorded her weight and the number of calories she’d eaten, then a long, sometimes desperate commentary on how her hair looked awful, how fat she was getting. She made plans for how much she would eat at weekends. Zoë had read surveys that said at least seventy per cent of teenage girls were always on a diet. She’d spent her own teens worrying about the streak-of-piss insults her gangly frame got her – but to be always worrying about what food you put in your mouth, what kind of a hell prison was that?

More than once the initials ‘RH’ came up.

April fourteenth. Saw RH. He’s mega with the fat-tie thing. Christina says he likes me. I don’t know. Wore my Hard Candy blue eyeshadow. Totally lush!

RH was talking to that girl in the sixth form that’s supposed to have a flat in New York. Nela says her name is Mathilda but I thought Tillie though maybe that’s short for it. Quite pretty with blonde hair but she’s got really fat calves. She shouldn’t wear leggings. Yuk
.

Went to Katinka’s after school. And got some hair colour – going to do it when Alice comes over at the weekend. Mum’s going to FREEEEEEEEEEAKKKK!!!!! EEEEEKKK!!!

Read about this girl who was on holiday in Goa with her family. She was just sitting on the beach and a scout from Storm in London saw her. Her first job she got £1,000 and the editor of
Vogue saw her and put her on the front page. Now she lives in New York, New York!!!! And she’s from Weston bloody super Mare! I look at her and I think – if you can do it
…

The next page was taken up with nothing but the initials ‘LW’ entwined with ‘RH’. On the page after that, on 20 April, a note said:

Kissed him!!!!! I am officially in LOVE!!!!!! Can’t tell anyone. He said his mum would kill him if she knew. She’s a complete witch. He says he’s going to apply to University College and Imperial, so when I’ve got my totally lush flat in Chelsea (ha ha!) he can come and see me anytime we feel like it and his batshit crazy mother can’t get us
.

Zoë turned the page. If Debbie Harry saw this and the comments on his dominating mother, she’d hang, draw and quarter RH. Whoever he was.