Hanging Hill

lipstick. ‘What,’ she said slowly, ‘makes you think it was Kelvin?’

‘Because of what I found when I was at his house. This morning.’

‘You were there this morning? No – I was there this mor…’ Her voice faded. ‘I was there, not you.’

‘I was too. When you arrived I was in the back room. Did you knock?’

‘Yes.’

‘That’s when I left.’

‘Hang on, hang on.’ She held up a hand. ‘Slowly now. Why were you there?’

‘He’s trying to blackmail me. I found the lipstick he used to write this in. He’s either blackmailing me or trying to scare me into giving myself up to the police.’

‘Giving yourself up to the police?’

Sally nodded at her sister. Her expression was sad – determined, and brave, but very sad too.

‘Sally? What the hell’s going on? What is it?’

‘I did it.’

‘Did what?’

‘David Goldrab. You want to know what happened to him, and I’m telling you. It was me. I killed him.’

‘Yeah, right.’

‘I mean it. I killed him and I didn’t report it. Even though I should have. But I didn’t. And then…’ She rubbed her hands together nervously. ‘I had to get rid of the body.’

Zoe snorted. ‘Wish I’d been there. I’d’ve helped. He’s an arse.’

‘No, Zoe. I really mean it.’

Zoe became very still. She studied her sister’s face. Her eyes had lost their usual soft smudgy blueness. As if they’d cracked somehow, like marbles. There was something tough and proud in them. Zoe gave a hesitant, uncertain smile. ‘Sally?’

‘Everyone thought you were really independent and clever and smart. Well, everyone thought I was really mild and harmless. And stupid. But it turns out I’m not. I killed David Goldrab and I covered the whole thing up. It was me.’

‘No. No. This is-’

‘It was an accident. Sort of an accident. He attacked me when I was there working one day. I was on my own… It wasn’t what I meant to happen. But it was me all the same.’

Zoe stared at her and Sally stared back. From the open window came the vaguely electronic-sounding twitter of a lark singing as it rose up through the air. Zoe thought about Jake the Peg, about Dominic Mooney. She thought of Jason sleeping on a sofa covered with coats. Lieutenant Colonel Watling and Captain Charlie Zhang and all the wrong turnings she’d taken. She bent her head, pressed her fingers to her eyelids, trying to get some clarity in her head. When she spoke her voice was thick. Unnaturally high.

‘What did you – you know, how did you…’

‘I killed him with a nail gun. And then I cut him up. I know it sounds insane but I did.’ She jerked her chin at the window. ‘Out there.’

‘He’s in your garden?’

‘No. He’s everywhere. All over the countryside.’

‘Jesus.’ She felt so, so cold, worn down to a thing that was transparent and wafer thin. ‘This is craziness. This is…’ She was lost for words. ‘You’re not joking,’ she said eventually. ‘You’re really, really not joking. You mean all this. Don’t you?’

‘Yes.’

‘You’ve never done anything like it before?’

‘No. But when I’d done it I felt good. And I feel better. About everything. Look at me. I’m different.’

It was true, Zoe thought, she was different. As if the bones that had all her life lain deep under her soft, perfect skin had suddenly hefted themselves up to the surface and were pressing impatiently against it. All this time she’d been scared of Goldrab coming back when, in fact, he was dead. Very dead. And her own sister to thank for it. She gestured at the lipstick on the tissues. ‘This was on your car seat?’

‘On the passenger side.’

Zoe moved the tissues around with her finger. ‘That little boy we knew at nursery?’ she said, after a while. ‘Kelvin? He’s gone. You do know that, don’t you? You know that he’s a grown man, and whatever has happened to him, he’s dangerous and, worse than that, he’s insane.’

‘I know.’

‘And you understand that, whatever happens, we’re going to have to find a way of getting him locked up? Without me saying what’s happened to me – without you saying what happened with… with Goldrab.’

‘Yes.’

‘There are some things in his house that link him to Lorne.’

‘We could somehow tip the police off? Anonymously? Can you do that?’

‘You can. But it won’t be that easy. My guess is he’ll have hidden them all – destroyed them now that I’ve escaped. He’ll know the police aren’t far away.’

‘Oh,’ she said, deflated. ‘Then what?’

‘I don’t know.’ Zoe rubbed her ankle. It was aching from when she’d dropped off the balcony. ‘Not completely yet. But I’ve got some ideas.’

35

An odd, non-reflective sky hung over Kelvin’s cottage. As if the world sensed what lived there and wanted to blanket it. To suffocate it slowly. A few rooks cawed in the lime trees on the lane, and the mill stream babbled softly. The two women sat in Sally’s Ka, parked at the top of the lane next to Zoe’s car, abandoned this morning in her escape. They could see down past the hedgerow, with its new soft leaves, to the front of Kelvin’s cottage. It was deserted.

‘It’s what I expected.’ Next to her, Zoe took off the sunglasses Sally had lent her, tipped down the sun visor and checked her reflection in the mirror. She seemed in control but Sally knew it was an act. She used the cuff of the blouse – also Sally’s – to dab at a cut on her mouth. She was wearing a little of Sally’s makeup too – some concealer over the red and grey bruises that were already starting across her right cheekbone. Eventually she shook her head, as if her appearance was a losing battle, and closed the mirror. ‘It’s all gone wrong for him now because I survived. It wasn’t supposed to happen that way. I was supposed to die. Now he’s scared. He’s on the run. It’s like I guessed – there won’t be any of Lorne’s things in there. Or mine.’

Sally bit her lip and leaned forward a little, anxiously scanning the scene. An apple tree on the other side of David Goldrab’s garden had dropped its blossom. It had blown in dirty white drifts along the lane and lay in complex scrawls around Kelvin’s derelict garage. She didn’t like this. Didn’t like it at all. When he’d been here, in the cottage, her fear at least had been contained in one place. Now it could be anywhere – anywhere out there. Like a virus released on the wind.

‘What about the photos though? If he’s got any evidence against me – photos or something – they might still be in there.’

‘I promise you, there’s nothing in that house. I went through it. There were pictures… but not of you. Anyway, he’s not organized enough to have done that. He’d have needed a long-range lens.’

‘Are you sure?’

‘I’m sure. I swear.’

Sally rubbed the goosebumps on her arms. ‘Plan B, then?’

‘Plan B it is. Just a few more hoops to jump through. Come on, let’s get a wriggle on.’

She climbed out, got into her Mondeo and started the engine. Sally followed in the Ka, driving slowly down to the cottage. They parked at the top of the driveway. They left the doors open, keys in the ignition – if Kelvin did reappear he couldn’t take both cars at once. They’d have a precious few seconds to start the engine of the other to make their escape. Anyway, Zoe insisted, he wasn’t going to show his face again. Not round here.