Hanging Hill Part 34

She leaned out of the broken window, angled the torch down, and saw he wasn't kneeling at all. It was just that he had no legs. What had once been his lower body had concertinaed here. Into a bag of broken limbs half held together by his jeans. A tree branch growing out of the rock had caught him suspended him there like a puppet, moving him back and forward into the window. Slowly, she raised the torch to the rockface. Saw a tree hanging half out of the rock, pale yellow earth spilling down. A long scar as if someone had tumbled down. She saw it all now Kelvin and Nial struggling. A long, scrambling fall.

She pulled back from the window, and picked her way back across the litter of beer cans into the hallway. She dropped to a crouch next to Nial, where the ground was tacky with blood. She put her hand on his side, feeling it rapidly rise and fall under her fingers. His body was hot. As if the effort of the struggle with Kelvin was still being released.

He had a tiny ribcage, not much bigger than Millie's. She pulled his s.h.i.+rt down to cover him. 'Can you hear me? Where's Millie?'

He lifted his hands to his face and groaned. He half turned on to his back.

'Nial? It's OK. You can tell me I'm prepared.'

'She's OK.' His voice was thick. 'She's safe. I did it.'

'Did it? Did what?'

'I saved her. I saved Millie.'

Sally rocked back and sat down, among the beer cans, litter and broken gla.s.s. She sat there, holding her ankles, the floor and walls all moving around her. 'Where, Nial?' she heard Zoe say behind her. 'Where is she?'

'I locked her in the Glasto van. Up near the house. She hasn't got her phone it all happened too fast. You must have driven right past her.'

Part Three

1.

Ben couldn't understand why Zoe wanted to go to Kelvin Burford's funeral. What did she think she was going to gain from it? Did she feel sorry for his family? Or did she simply want to be sure he was really dead and gone? Zoe couldn't answer the question, she just didn't know, but she went all the same: her, Sally and Steve. Millie, Nial and Peter had come too, still adamant they wanted to be there. So it was six of them that shuffled into a pew that day in the tiny chapel, each a little uncomfortable and awkward, fidgeting in their formal clothing, hoping the service wouldn't be too long and drawn out.

It was midsummer. The coroner had taken five weeks to call the final inquest on Kelvin Burford's death and reach the verdict of death by misadventure. The investigation into Lorne Wood's death, meanwhile, hadn't officially been closed, but Kelvin might as well have been tried and convicted of it because the whole world knew what he'd done. The scarf at the ca.n.a.l was positive for his DNA, and when his house was searched not only had Lorne's pink fleece and mobile phone been discovered under the bed, but also, in the desk drawer downstairs, the lipstick used to write on her body and the distinctive filigree earring that had been ripped from her ear. Ironic, really, when Zoe thought of all the planning she, Sally and Ben had put into getting Kelvin nailed a.s.suming he'd have disposed of the evidence at his cottage and would have to be nailed some other way.

There'd been story after story about the 'monster' Burford in the paper, detailing Kelvin's past, his injury in Basra, his a.s.sault on the girl in Radstock. There weren't many of his friends and family brave enough to turn up to the funeral so the congregation was small. Zoe glanced around a few police, one or two colleagues who'd served with him in Basra wedged into the uncomfortable pews, not meeting anyone's eyes, as if they were ashamed. Then she realized with a jolt that the pew they'd chosen was directly behind Kelvin's sister. She stopped moving around then and, as silence fell in the chapel, studied the back of the woman's head. Fair hair curling out from under a black straw pillbox hat. It occurred then to Zoe that maybe guilt had sent her here. Shame at the number of ways she'd stepped outside the subtle moral framework of truth and lies that the police were supposed to know and respect. As well as Kelvin, David Goldrab's disappearance was on her conscience repeatedly she'd rea.s.sured the family that everything possible was being done, while in truth she was silently helping the case to slide further and further down the force's must-do list.

Air wheezed into the organ pipes, a chord sounded. She picked up the order of service and fanned herself lightly, raising her eyes to the rafters overhead. The cobwebs and the dust. Maybe the eyes of G.o.d were beyond all that, peering down at her, seeing all these secrets. She'd been wrong that Lorne was just the tip of the iceberg, that Kelvin had already killed. There had been no traces of human remains anywhere in the house or in the Land Rover and the photo from Iraq had been downloaded from a website that had got thousands of hits before it had been wiped from the server. Yes, she thought, she'd been wrong about a lot of things in the last few weeks. But some right had come out of it too. Her connection to Sally, to Millie. And maybe, through that, a new way of connecting to the rest of the world. A new dimension in the pattern she was leaving.

The doors at the back of the church opened and the funeral director's pall-bearers began the long walk up the aisle. Zoe looked down and saw Sally's hand resting on her lap. She looked to her left and saw Millie's hand on hers. On an impulse she reached out and took both, and as she did, the answer to Ben's question about the funeral popped into her head.

Solidarity. That was what it was. She was here to show the world, and Kelvin's memory, that this family, her family, wouldn't be pushed apart again. Ever.

2.

When the service was over, the teenagers ran on ahead, though the adults lingered a while, waiting for Kelvin's sister to go before they got up and left by the east entrance, which led into the graveyard. They didn't want to b.u.mp into the press who were ranked outside the west gate, gathering around Kelvin's sister.

The three of them went to the bench under the buddleia tree to wait it out. Sally sat on Steve's knee, Zoe stood in front of them, smiling, a hand up to shade her eyes from the sun. She looked gorgeous, Sally thought, like an Amazon. Dressed in white from head to foot, with an incredible tan she'd picked up just from being on her bike. Her face had healed completely and she wore a solid cherry-red lipstick that hadn't smudged or faded.

'I like your dress,' Sally said. 'And the hat.'

'Thanks.' Zoe pulled off the hat and sat next to them. Tried to shake a crease out of the skirt. 'It's not really my thing. You know, dresses and hats. Still proves I scrub up OK.'

'Ben's not here?'

'Yes he's waiting in the car until the press go. See him?'

Sally looked across the graves and the cypress trees and saw a dark-blue Audi pulled up in the patchy sunlight. Ben was inside it, wearing sungla.s.ses. 'He's staring at us. He doesn't look happy.'

'Ignore him. He reckoned we shouldn't have come to the funeral. Thinks we're nuts.'

Behind Ben, Nial and Peter's Glas...o...b..ry vans were parked. Peter had got into his and now Nial was unlocking the side door of his and pulling it back to let in some cooler air. In the days since the inquest Nial had painted yellow flowers and skulls on it. He'd stencilled a line around the middle, a Plimsoll line in pale blue, with the words 'Projected Glasto mud level 2011'.

'They're going to Glas...o...b..ry tonight,' Steve told Zoe. 'Sleeping in the van for three days. Nice.'

'The Pilton mudbath? Oh, Christ, I feel so jealous. You're happy to let her go? After everything?'

Sally watched Millie lean into the cab of Nial's camper and attach something a charm or a ribbon to the mirror. She saw Nial loosen his tie he still had a brownish mark on the side of his face where he'd sc.r.a.ped it in the tumble down the cliff. Both of them looked awkward and wrong in their formal outfits a white blouse and black skirt for Millie, bare legs in black pumps, which looked vulnerable and out of place, Nial in a suit that was a little short in the legs, his hands dangling out of the sleeves. He was growing into himself, just as Sally had known he would eventually. There'd been story after story about him in the papers. Nial little Nial, suddenly pushed into the shoes of the hero leading Kelvin to Pollock's Farm away from Millie, whom he'd hidden in the camper-van. The tarot had been wrong that Millie was going to die. A warning, of Kelvin and what was to come, but not a warning of death. 'I'm not worried.' Sally smiled. 'She'll be all right with Nial.'

'He's totally in love with her,' Steve said.

Zoe laughed. 'He might be in love with her, but what about Millie? Has it worked? He's a hero now is she in love with him?'

'No.' Sally sighed. 'Of course not. Poor Nial.'

'No?'

'It's Peter. It's always been Peter.'

Zoe narrowed her eyes at Peter, who was sitting in his van fastening his seatbelt. 'That waste of s.p.a.ce? I never liked him, not from the moment I set eyes on him he's too full of himself.'

'I know. He's split up from Sophie now, though, so you never know.' She shook her head. 'One day Millie'll look back and see what she missed in Nial. I just hope it's not too late.'

Sally meant it. She was sure Nial was the right one for Millie. It wasn't just the heroics of the night, it was something that had happened the day Nial was released from the hospital. He and Millie had come to Sally with serious faces and told her a different version of the events at Pollock's Farm. Even now she was still turning this new version round and round in her head, trying to decide where to put it, what to think of it, whether she should be angry with them. They had told her that, coming home from school the previous night, Millie had been terrified about what Sally might be doing and whether she was going to confront Kelvin. They both knew what he was capable of, so Nial had taken the situation in hand.

Kelvin hadn't followed Millie out to Pollock's Farm at all. In fact, quite the opposite. He'd been lured there by Nial, who had decided, as part of his heroic fantasy, that he was going to take Kelvin on. Fight him face to face like a man. Millie hadn't known anything about it, Nial insisted valiantly, until at the very last minute. All she knew was that twenty minutes after they'd got home Nial had stepped outside to make a private call. Minutes later he'd come hurrying back inside, telling her to hide quickly in the Glasto van. Of course he hadn't foreseen the awful outcome, the long, clumsy chase that had taken them over the edge of the cliff. He'd only done it because, above everything, he and Millie had wanted to protect her, Sally.

She'd smiled quizzically at him when he said that, flattered, but puzzled. She wondered why anyone would ever want to protect her. She felt like a lion. She didn't think she'd ever need protecting again. She thought life was very wild, and weird, and wonderful.

'Zoe,' she said now, 'do you think it's OK to do the wrong thing for the right reason?'

Her sister put her head back and roared with laughter. 'Good G.o.d! What do you think I think?'

'But what about the pattern?'

Zoe smiled and let her eyes wander over to Ben's car. 'The pattern?' she said softly. 'Oh, that always works itself out in the end.'

Sally smiled at that, and blushed, and looked down at Steve's hands, linked across her lap. She thought about the three of them, she and Zoe and Millie, locked for ever to one person by a secret. For Zoe it was Ben and for her it was Steve. And that was OK. They were the people they wanted to be locked to. But for Millie ...?

Well, for Millie it would happen eventually. One day she'd look at Nial and know she'd met the one.

3.

As soon as Zoe got into the car she saw that Sally had been right: Ben really was in a mood. His expression was solemn. Guarded.

'What?' She buckled the seat-belt and glared at him. 'Because I went to his funeral? Well, I know why now. We wanted to show strength, not cowardice, like he did. Is that a sin?'

He took off the sungla.s.ses and started the car. 'It's not that.' He checked the rear-view mirror and pulled out of the parking s.p.a.ce. 'Not that at all.'

'Then what? For Christ's sake.'

'We've got to talk. About all of this.' He waved a hand behind him to indicate the church. 'Something's gone seriously awry.'

Zoe stared at him. She could feel a pulse ticking in her temple. 'Awry?' she said carefully. 'What does "awry" mean?'

'I've been going through the stuff from Kelvin's place. We weren't just looking for things to connect him to Lorne, we were looking to see if he had anything to do with David Goldrab's disappearance.'

'I know.'

'It would be such a lovely tick in the box on our clear-up rates.'

'Did you find anything?'

'Not what we expected. We found something that turned everything around.'

'What? What have you found? Something I left? My phone?'

'Not a trace of you. No, we found something that ...' he moved his jaw from side to side, grinding his teeth '... something that just doesn't make sense. However I look at it.'

4.

Sally stood next to the window in the utility room at Peppercorn Cottage, was.h.i.+ng a lace blouse in the sink, her eyes raised to the perfect blue sky, crisscrossed with vapour trails. The awful silences that had gathered around Peppercorn after David's death had gone and now it felt like a proper home. Steve was in the garage, hammering back some weatherboarding that had come loose. Next to the garage Nial and Millie were swarming around the VW camper-van, piling things into it. A cooler that Nial had adapted to run from the cigarette-lighter socket was stuffed with beer no food or anything of any nutritional value as far as Sally could tell. There were rolls of bedding and Millie's dresses arranged on hangers in the windows. She was already frantic Nial had accidentally dropped her mobile phone into the was.h.i.+ng-up bowl: it now lay in pieces on the dashboard, drying off in the sun with two of her blouses, a pair of denim shorts and some underwear that hadn't come out of the wash in time.

'You just don't get it, Mum. If we don't get there like radically radically early we're so stuffed. The best pitches go in the first ten minutes even in the camper-van fields. Honestly, we should have packed before the funeral. Peter and his brother's mates will already be there.' early we're so stuffed. The best pitches go in the first ten minutes even in the camper-van fields. Honestly, we should have packed before the funeral. Peter and his brother's mates will already be there.'

Sally gently wrung out the blouse and hung it up in the window, where it would catch the rest of the day's heat. Outside, the yellow smudges of kerria and forsythia had long gone, and now the thick, heady summer blooms were beginning, delphiniums and poppies, bees swarming around them. Millie pa.s.sed the window on the way to the van, arms full of clothes, and stuck her tongue out at her mother. Sally smiled. How incredible, when all along she thought she was the one protecting them, that they they'd been protecting her her. Nial put some music on the van's sound system Florence and the Machine making the van shake. Not kids any more. No they were adults.

She straightened the cuffs on the blouse. She'd wear it tonight and let Steve take it off her. They were going out to dinner. They would talk for hours. They'd get silly drunk. She'd tell him about the job she'd been offered by the hippies who'd bought her tarot cards chief designer for a whole new product line they were launching. He'd tell her he loved her, and, maybe for the hundredth time, he'd make her a promise she didn't want to accept. He'd say that if anything about David Goldrab ever came out, he was going to take the blame. He kept saying over and over again that he'd made the decision and that, if it came to it, Sally's name was never going to be mentioned.

5.

Ben drove Zoe home in silence. He wouldn't say any more until he had her in the living room and had closed the doors. She half expected him to close the curtains too, he was in such a sombre, secretive mood.

'What did you find? Something to do with Goldrab?'

'Sit down.'

s.h.i.+t, she thought. Sally had been right. Kelvin had had taken photos of her that night. taken photos of her that night.

'Ben just tell me. What have you found? Is it Goldrab?'

'There was a contract out on Goldrab you knew that. The SIB have taken Mooney in. He's not talking.'

'And?'

'We found Goldrab's teeth buried in Kelvin's back garden.'

She let her breath out. 'OK,' she said cautiously. 'So it was Kelvin, then, who killed Goldrab?'

'Looks like it. But that's not what's worrying me. It's something else. What happened was that while we were searching we found a bunch of paperwork. I've been going through it all this week. And now ...'

'Now what?'

'I've decided he didn't kill Lorne.'

She gaped at him. 'Didn't kill kill her?' her?'

'Or rape her.'

'Jesus. What the h.e.l.l did you find?'

'OK, OK. Listen. He did what he did to you and, Zoe, that was the worst thing I could imagine happening. Ever. I still don't know how I'm supposed to be about it and I still don't know what it's doing to you. Not exactly. But I've got to look past all that. Because none of it means he raped Lorne too.'

'Hang on what about all the things you found at his house? Her fleece. Her mobile phone.'