Hanging Hill

by Mo Hayder

  She got to her feet, put the lid back on the tin, slid it inside her jacket, and felt for her car keys. If she didn’t do it now, she never would. She walked up the lane to the car, fast, her head down. Opened the door, threw the tin on to the passenger seat and swung inside. She started the engine and reversed up the drive, the familiar petrolly fumes coming in through the rattly back windows.

  29

  The boards outside creaked. Kelvin was walking leisurely along the landing, sauntering as if he was out in a park on a sunny day. He went to the front bedroom first. Zoë heard him throwing the boxes around. He was humming to himself. He had all the time in the world.

  She grabbed the fleece, dragged it across the floorboards towards her and patted the pockets. Pulled out a mobile phone. Looked at it, her pulse racing. A white iPhone. It was Lorne’s. She put her head back, her heart thudding like a jack-hammer. She’d been right. Right. Those arguments she’d had with Ben and Deborah, that Lorne’s killer wasn’t a teenager, she’d been right. And she’d been right to circle Goldrab and the porn industry – Lorne had met Kelvin through either Goldrab or the nightclubs. There couldn’t be any other way a girl like her would have a connection to a man like Kelvin. God, Lorne, I’m sorry, she thought. For a while I lost sight of you. But you were there all along. I just never expected it to happen like this.

  His footsteps stopped in the doorway. She tried the phone but the battery was dead, so she pushed it into the fleece pocket. She could see his blue Hunters in the doorway. Usually she’d be wearing a police radio, but she’d left it in the car. Stealthily she reached into her pocket for her own phone. The wellingtons came across the floor. Before she could even check the phone for a signal, Kelvin Burford crouched and his hands appeared, grabbing her ankles. She scrambled for the slats under the bed, dropping the phone in her haste. It skimmed across the floor, spinning, hitting the skirting-board. Kelvin braced one foot on the bed base to get leverage and pulled at her feet. She held on tight to the slats. He tugged again, and this time her grip weakened. The nail on her index finger tore away. She let go and he dragged her out, across the floor on her stomach, her T-shirt riding up.

  He dropped her legs with a clatter. Instantly she slammed both hands on the floor, bunny-hopped to her feet and rounded on him, both hands out, her mouth open in a snarl. He stood against the wall, blinking at her, his hands half raised, as if he wasn’t sure whether to laugh or not.

  ‘Fucker.’ She threw her hands at him, flapping them like birds. He reached up to keep them from his eyes, and she took the chance to bring her foot into his groin. She made contact, felt him begin to double over. He fell heavily against her, almost knocking her off balance, but she danced out of his way. He staggered a few steps forward, his head down as if he was going to ram the fireplace. She turned and clasped her hands together in a fist above his head, brought them down hard. She was aiming for the back of his neck but she got a point between his shoulder blades. He roared with pain, twisting and flailing with one hand to grab her leg. She wasn’t expecting that – you broke the first rule: never wait to see the effect of the punch, just get in there with the second. He got her behind the knee and pulled so fast that she lost her balance and went down on her back with a thud.

  He dropped to his knees next to her, his expression almost bored, as if this was too tiring, too wearying to be bothered with, and punched her hard in the face. Her head was thrown sideways with the force. Something flew out of her nose. Then he got a handful of her hair and lifted her head off the floor – there was the tiny pop-popping noise of a hundred hair follicles being yanked out – raised his fist and hit her again.

  He dropped her head to the floor again and she lay there, panting thickly, staring through bleary eyes at a place about ten inches from her face where a spatter of blood had appeared on the bottom of the door. There was a noise – a wah-wah sound, as if someone in the room was squeezing out the air. The light coming through the french windows seemed suddenly greasy and unsteady, as if it was being manipulated. She tried to lift a hand to her face, but it wouldn’t obey. It rose a short way then fell, like a piece of dead meat, and lay near her face as if it didn’t belong to her. Kelvin was moving around the room, breathing hard. His weight on the floorboards tested the joists under her – as if the floor was bending slightly wherever he went. She thought about Lorne’s face. The blood and the bruising. There was a tube of tennis balls in the next bedroom. How many gamekeepers played tennis, for Christ’s sake? How could she have been so fucking stupid?

  Kelvin grunted. He got his hands under her armpits and lifted her on to the bed. She lay on her side, breathing rapidly, still unable to move. There was a pool of blood on the floor where her head had just been, bright red, like the ink from the luminous pens they used in the office. A clump of hair too, with something white attached to it. Her skin, she realized.

  ‘I’m going to tie you up now. OK?’

  She tried to move her legs. They wouldn’t budge. They just hung down over the edge of the bed, no life, no feeling. She understood what was going to happen now.

  ‘Come over here.’

  He pushed her a little further onto the bed. She was shivering, cold and hot at the same time. Where his hands touched her they felt like warm muscle meeting glass.

  ‘That’s it,’ he said. ‘Now here.’

  He lifted her numb legs and placed them on the sheets. She could see the veins in the whites of his eyes. An unhealthy yellowish film over the sclera. He smelt of woodsmoke and engine oil and dirty clothes. Zoë recalled the lines of blood running down Lorne’s cheeks. Her skin had split. Really split. ‘It’sh OK,’ she slurred.

  He looked her in the eye, puzzled. ‘What?’

  ‘It’sh OK. You can do it to me.’

  Kelvin kept his eyes on her, not expecting this. There was a white line on his lips, either from dried skin or toothpaste or spittle, she couldn’t be sure. If she died now Ben would see the marks – everyone would know she’d put up some resistance. You were supposed to fight, weren’t you? Fight for your honour. Except there were times that to win the war you had to lose the battle.

  ‘It’sh what I want.’

  He lowered his chin and looked at her steadily.

  ‘I mean it.’

  He sat on the bed, making the springs creak. ‘You what?’

  ‘I want it.’

  He gave the sly grin he used to give her from the back of the audience, the one that made her sure the dirtiness in her was on the inside, deep, deep down, not something superficial she’d picked up from working in the club.

  ‘You want what?’

  She gritted her teeth.

  ‘Say it. Say what you want.’

  ‘I want you to fuck me.’

  ‘Say, “Kelvin, I want you to fuck me.”’

  ‘I want you to fuck me, Kelvin.’

  ‘No. Get it right. Say, “Kelvin, I really want you to fuck me.” Lick your lips when you say it. Like you used to.’

  She held his eyes. The trembling was starting under her ribs. ‘Kelvin.’ She put her tongue between her lips. Shakily moved it across them. ‘I really want you to fuck me.’

  He unlaced his boots and set them to one side. He stood and unsnapped the waterproof leggings, throwing them on to the floor. He unzipped his jeans and stepped out of them. He wasn’t wearing anything underneath. No underwear. She could see his red testicles and penis dangling under the plaid shirt. He went to the dressing-table and sorted idly through the items on there. Please not a tennis ball. Please not that …

  He found instead a condom and split open the packet. She followed it with her eyes as he came back and sat on the bed. He wasn’t stupid: he wouldn’t leave a trace. It was what he’d done with Lorne.

  He sat down on the bed and began fumbling with her trousers. She didn’t move – she couldn’t. He got the zip undone and slid the jeans off, dragging her knickers with them. She kept her teeth clenched tight. Tried to shrink all her thoughts into a tight,
hard knot in the centre of her mind. He pulled her sweater off over her head and dragged her bottom to the edge of the bed. Her feet clunked dully back on the floor. He knelt in front of her and put on the condom. ‘Open your legs.’

  The trembling under her ribs grew into a body-length spasm.

  ‘Open your legs.’

  She managed to get them a small way apart and he used his knees to move them further, then pulled her closer and pushed himself inside her. He watched her closely while he worked at her, eyes on her face. She clamped her teeth together, and kept her eyes locked hard on a button on his breast pocket, holding them there, concentrating all the time on the tight place in her head. The feeling was coming back into her body now. She wished it wouldn’t, she wished she could feel nothing. The blood from her nose ran down the back of her throat. The blood in Lorne’s nose had congealed, blocked her nose. It had been what had killed her. What had Amy said in the barge? It seemed like an eternity ago. That rape was all about men and the way they secretly hated women?

  Then, suddenly, it was over. He was finished. He pulled away from her and removed the condom. Tied it in a knot and dropped it on the floor. Then he sat on the bed next to her, almost companionably, reaching over, pushing a hand up inside her T-shirt to massage her breast. ‘You liked that. Didn’t you?’

  She licked her lips. She could taste the blood. Salty, like sweat.

  ‘I said – did you enjoy that?’

  She closed her eyes and nodded.

  ‘Your nose is bleeding.’

  She raised a shaky hand, still weak, and wiped it. Kelvin stood and went out. She opened her eyes and blinked at the empty room. The tennis ball, she thought. Now he’s going to get the tennis ball. But when he reappeared next to the bed he was holding a towel. He handed it to her. She tried to sit up but failed. He pulled her upright and she sat there with the towel pressed on her nose. The feeling was coming back to her legs now, pricking like pins and needles.

  ‘I’d like to come back another time.’

  ‘What? What did you say?’

  Once, years ago, Zoë had interviewed a rape victim. The girl had said the same thing to her attacker – she’d said afterwards, I really like you – can we do this again? He’d believed her and instead of hurting her, had let her go. Zoë 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 Zoë’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 Zoë’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 Zoë 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 Zoë 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 Zoë 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.

  All like her …

  He knew Lorne as a stripper or topless model. The same way he’d known Zoë. 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 Zoë. 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.’

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  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 kettle – doing what? Making tea for himself? He was so fucking calm that he was happily making tea, as if this was a normal Thursday for him. She flexed each muscle, checked it was working, wouldn’t let her down. Then she linked her hands into the iron bed head to brace herself, lifted her right knee up to her chin and kicked. The glass broke instantly, falling outwards, tinkling on to the balcony. The cross brace above it needed a second thump. It splintered, taking the pane above with it. Another kick and the final pane toppled outwards from the frame. The hole was almost three foot deep.