Hanging Hill

‘You don’t remember her coming to you?’

‘She was a schoolgirl, I thought.’

‘Yes, but she wanted to model. And she might not have used her real name.’

She pulled from her satchel a laminated set of pictures that the reprographics unit had produced. A set of photos of Lorne. The billions poured into developing facial-recognition technology had done little more than raise an important issue: the human face is so multi-faceted that it can vary wildly just from the smallest change in angle and lighting. The chief constable had picked up on this and now the force was inclined to use a selection of photographs for identification purposes. On this sheet many of the photos collected from Lorne’s wall had been collaged. Zoe leaned half out of her chair and placed the sheet under Holden’s nose.

He looked at them. Frowned. Shook his head slowly. ‘Don’t think so. I get scores of photos from girls who think they’re going to be on page three, or the cover of FHM. The faces, I’ll be honest, merge into one eventually, but I don’t think I remember her.’

She took the sheet back and sat for a moment, eyes on Lorne’s Hollywood smile. None of these looked anything like the photos on the camera chip. They were in a totally different mood. She reached into her pocket for her iPhone, to which she’d transferred all the photos from Lorne’s chip, and brought up one of Lorne in underwear on the bed. Not the topless one. She’d protect Lorne from that at least. ‘How about that?’

This time Holden’s face changed. ‘OK,’ he said quietly. ‘That alters things. I do recognize her.’ He went to a filing cabinet and pulled out a folder, riffled through the photos and printed pages in it. ‘I would never have recognized her from the other photos – but seeing that, I remember.’ He pulled out a photo and held it up. It was one of the topless ones from the camera chip, printed out. ‘She emailed it to me – didn’t use that name, though. Called herself -’ he checked on the back ‘- Cherie. Cherie Garnett.’

Zoe’s whole body felt tired. She wasn’t glad she’d been right, just enormously depressed. ‘And? What did you say?’

‘Nah. I thought there was something a bit suspicious about it, to be honest. I thought right away she was younger than she said she was.’

‘That stopped you, did it?’

He raised his eyebrows. ‘It’s a serious offence. You really can’t be too careful. I told her I’d keep her on file.’

‘So you told her no. Are you sure?’

‘I’m sure.’

She looked at him, trying to get the measure of him. She thought he was telling the truth. ‘Do you think she’d have gone somewhere else when you turned her down?’

He was silent for a moment. Then he got to his feet and opened a filing cabinet. He took out a written list and handed it to her. ‘Listen,’ he said seriously, ‘I don’t know you and you don’t owe me a thing. But if you tell any of them who put you in touch and it comes out it’s me – well, I’m just saying.’

Zoe scanned the sheet. It had about fifty names printed on it with contact details. A lot of them seemed to be agents around the West Country, but several were lap-dance clubs. ‘Did you give her this list?’

‘I didn’t. I give you my word on that. But I’m not the only show in town. Someone else may have.’

She folded the page of addresses, put it into her pocket and got to her feet. ‘Just one last thing,’ she said.

‘Yes?’

‘If you have any more thoughts on this don’t call the police station. None of the others are working on this lead so you need to speak to me direct.’ She pulled a business card out of her pocket and laid it on his desk. ‘And don’t leave any messages except on my personal voicemail. If you do that for me…’

‘Yes?’

‘Your name won’t be mentioned to anyone on this list.’

36

Sally found herself staring at David Goldrab as she cleaned his house that day. She kept trying to catch glimpses of him as he wandered around after his visit to the stables, opening a bottle of champagne, tapping his whip on his calf as if keeping rhythm with some song he was humming. She stood at the sink opposite him, in her rubber gloves, wiping the surface over and over, not looking at it but at him – his skin, his hands, his arms. The moving parts of him that made him living. Someone wanted him dead. Actually dead. Not pretend dead. Really.

She finished her cleaning chores and went to the office to start entering the household expenses into the database. She’d been there for about ten minutes when she heard him go upstairs to the gym, which faced out over the front of the property. Soon she heard the familiar whirr of the treadmill, then the thud-thud-thud of him running. Her eyes drifted to the bank of computers on the other desk. His ‘business’ section. She thought about what Steve had said. Porn. But nasty porn. Something dark and enveloping. She bit her lip and tried to concentrate on the column of figures. Earlier she’d noticed a light on the other computer. It meant it was on standby – not actually switched off.

After a while she couldn’t stop her attention wandering to it. She stood up and, tongue between her teeth, leaned over and touched the mouse. The computer whirred and began to come to life. Suddenly scared, she got up and went to the open door, looking up at the ceiling. Bang-bang-bang, came the noise from the treadmill.

Quickly she went back into the office and to the computer. David hadn’t logged out of the session – everything on the screen was plain to see. The wallpaper for the desktop was a scanned newspaper page. It showed a man in his forties, heavy chin, thinning hair, dressed in a suit. The photo seemed to have been taken in the street somewhere: he was holding his hand up to the camera as if he’d been caught by photographers. The headline read: ‘Top MoD man Mooney heads Kosovan sex unit’. It looked as if the article had come from the Sun or the Mirror or another tabloid. She scanned the article – something about a unit that had been set up within the United Nations to stop women being brought in as prostitutes for the peace-keeping forces. Then she examined the man’s face. Mooney. Steve’s client. Did the fact it was on his computer mean David knew Mooney was watching him?

She bit her lip and glanced up at the doorway. Overlying the photo on the screen there were ten icons on the desktop, each with the file extension ‘mov’. Videos. Still David was pounding on the treadmill. She let the mouse trail over the icons. It was ridiculous, when she thought about it, but she was thirty- five and she didn’t remember ever having seen a porn movie from beginning to end. She must have seen snippets, though, somewhere along the line, because if she really concentrated she had an idea of what to expect – very tanned women with blonde hair and bouncy breasts and lips painted pillar-box red. She thought of faces contorted in ecstasy. What she didn’t expect was what she saw when she got up the courage to click on the first icon.

It was set in what looked like a large livestock pen, with whitewashed concrete walls and grid-shaped floodlights suspended overhead. At first all Sally could see were the backs of people gathered around, as if they were watching something on the floor in the centre of the pen. They were all men, dressed averagely enough from the neck down – jeans, shirts, sweaters. Their faces were covered – some wore scarves tied so that only their eyes showed, others had ski masks or balaclavas. A few wore rubber party masks: Osama bin Laden, Michael Jackson, Elvis Presley, Barack Obama. It would seem bizarre and even comical if it hadn’t been for the fact that all the men had their flies undone and were openly masturbating.

The camera panned up, the picture became clearer, and Sally felt herself go numb. In the centre of the ring someone lay naked on a tattered mattress – a girl, though at first it was difficult to see her sex, she was so emaciated. Her tiny ankles were manacled to the floor, her legs forced apart. Her face wasn’t visible, but Sally could tell she was young. Very young. Not much older than Millie, maybe.

A man wearing sunglasses and a baseball cap pulled low over his face pushed his way through the crowd. He wore jeans and a tight T-shirt and, although his face was half covered, she immediately recognized him as Jake. It was the tan and the muscular arms that did it. He approached the girl and straddled her, one foot on either side of each shoulder, so he was looking down at her head. He began to unzip his flies – and as he did Sally realized the noise of the treadmill had stopped.

She clicked off the video and hurriedly went to the shut-down button. And as she did she remembered it had