hurting her, had let her go. Zoe swallowed more blood. Repeated it, louder this time: ‘I’d like to come back another time. For more.’
He frowned, genuinely perplexed. ‘You don’t think I’m going to let you go – not now – do you?’
30
It was Zoe’s face that stopped Sally. She’d got halfway up Hanging Hill, gripping the steering-wheel so hard her hands were white, leaning forward and staring out of the windscreen. The turning to Lightpil House and Kelvin’s cottage was up ahead but, as she indicated to turn, out of nowhere Zoe’s expression popped into her head. It was when she’d been standing at the table in the kitchen the day before yesterday, talking about patterns and the way we all connected to each other.
Sally faltered. Her foot twitched on the accelerator. She tried to picture Zoe with a tin full of a dead man’s teeth, driving into the countryside with them. To do what? Point the finger at someone innocent. She couldn’t conjure up the image. Just couldn’t. Clever as Zoe was, it wasn’t how she’d deal with this. And then Sally had a memory of Kelvin Burford at nursery school all those years ago – a fierce and sturdy little boy with the snot dried in crusts where he’d wiped it across his face, the feral sense of determination that stuck right out of his eyes whenever he looked at you.
As the turning to the gamekeeper’s cottage came up to meet her, she flicked the indicator off. She let the car sail past it, continuing on along the main road. Scared as she was of Kelvin, she couldn’t do something else this contorted. Whatever Steve said, she couldn’t go on spoiling the pattern.
No. There had to be another way.
31
‘What’s the matter?’ Kelvin had brought a bottle of cider up from the kitchen. He was standing at the window that looked out to the side of the house, unscrewing the bottle and pouring the contents into a cloudy glass. He lowered his chin and gave Zoe a long, measured look. ‘What’s the matter with you? You look weird.’
She lay in a curl against the bed head. She could no longer breathe through her nose: it had filled with compacted blood. Just like Lorne’s had. She kept thinking about that pile of bodies in Iraq. She kept thinking that if Kelvin had seen things like that on a day-to-day basis then Lorne’s death would have seemed like nothing.
He knew Lorne as a stripper or topless model. The same way he’d known Zoe. Neither of them would matter much to someone this insane. They’d be just links in the sequence. The superintendent had laughed, and said, ‘You’re telling us there’s a pile of bodies somewhere?’ but Kelvin wouldn’t see any difference between a pile of dead women and a pile of dead Iraqi insurgents. And to fight it she had nothing. Clever, clever Zoe. Spiky and cold, yes, but you couldn’t take the clever out of her. Except now. When she just couldn’t find a clever solution to this.
‘I’m…’ she began.
‘What?’ He looked up sharply. ‘You’re what?’
She hesitated. If she told him now she was police it could go either way. It could scare him into releasing her, or it could make him finish the job off even quicker.
‘You’re what?’
‘I’m cold. Can I have my sweater back?’
He grabbed it from the floor and threw it at her, then sat down and drank the glass of cider in one gulp. He lit a cigarette and smoked for a while, his eyes on the wall, as if he was lost in thought. She clutched the sweater round her shoulders. Gave a small shiver. ‘I have to go now.’ Her voice was coming out a bit thick when she spoke, making her sound as though she was deaf. ‘My husband’s going to call the police – he’ll be worried about me. I want to see you again. I’ll come back.’
‘You’ve said that already.’
‘I meant it.’
He poured more cider, screwed the lid on the bottle and raised the glass, as if he’d lost interest in her. She dropped her head back and breathed slowly through her mouth. She’d noticed in the last ten minutes that the window-frame was weak. Maybe – maybe…
‘You made me angry.’ Kelvin didn’t turn to her. ‘You made me angry and you made me do it. There’s a line, you know.’ He tapped the cider glass rhythmically. ‘A clear line. And once you cross it, once you’ve stepped into that other world, you have to accept the consequences. You have to take special measures.’
‘I’ll come back.’
‘Shut up. I’m thinking.’
She lay in silence, her eyes going from him back to the window-frame. Magpies sat in the branches of the tree outside, the way they had outside Lorne’s house. She wanted to shout to them, tell them to fetch someone, as if they could help her. Kelvin drank some more. He pulled up a chair and put it next to the chest of drawers, sat with his elbows on it, as if it was a desk. Lit another cigarette.
‘Can I have some water?’
He lowered his chin and turned his eyes to her, his face serious. ‘What?’
‘Water? I’m thirsty.’
‘Are you?’
‘Please?’
He shrugged, pushed the chair back. ‘Did you like me fucking you?’
She clenched her teeth.
‘I said – did you like me fucking you?’
‘Yes.’
He cocked his head, cupped his hand to his ear.
‘I liked it. Kelvin.’
‘Good. Then I’ll get you some water.’ He got up. Halfway to the door he took a sudden sharp step towards her, his hands coming up as if he was going to attack. She jolted back into the headboard, her arms flying up to protect her face. Then she saw he was smiling. Cautiously, she lowered her hands. ‘Don’t be so jumpy.’ He smiled. ‘We’ll get through this, babe.’ He came back to the bed and squeezed her leg reassuringly. ‘We’ll get through this together.’
32
When he’d gone she worked fast. She pulled on her trousers, her sweater. No time for knickers. It seemed to take for ever to get the boots on to her numb feet. Downstairs Kelvin turned on the tap in the kitchen. The water pipes in the walls knocked and groaned. The condom she shoved into her back pocket. She’d been thinking hard. The frames between the panes in the french windows were fragile – little more than beading holding the glass in: she’d be able to fit through the hole made by three frames in a vertical row. The moment the first pane went he’d hear, though, so she’d have to do it fast. Bam bam. Like the karate experts she’d once sat and watched in a Japanese park at dawn. Like Uma Thurman in the yellow jumpsuit in that film years ago.
From the balcony the drop was ten feet. If she didn’t land well she could forget it – her legs and feet were weak enough already without an injury and her only hope was to recover from the drop instantly and run straight into the forest before he could follow. Even when he had realized what the noise was it would take him time to get from the kitchen to the front of the house. The front door was locked – he’d have to find the key or go out of the back and round the cottage before she had time to reach the far trees.
The sound of him opening and closing the fridge door came up clearly from the kitchen. She heard him filling a
