Hanging Hill Part 9

'It's more than that.'

She took a gulp of the wine.

'Come on. What's on your mind?'

'I'm sorry I just it's been a bad day. With Millie, with work.' She shook her head despairingly. How could this keep happening? How could she go on being so stupid? All All the time. All the time. It just wasn't getting any better. 'The house is falling down around my ears, Steve. The downpipe at the back has fallen off and there's damp everywhere. The thatch is rotting, there are rats in the ceiling and they've eaten through the plasterboard. I found squirrel droppings in the utility room on Monday. It'd cost me ten thousand pounds to put it all back and me? Idiot me? I don't even know if I'm going to pay my council tax this month. And then ... then today ...' the time. All the time. It just wasn't getting any better. 'The house is falling down around my ears, Steve. The downpipe at the back has fallen off and there's damp everywhere. The thatch is rotting, there are rats in the ceiling and they've eaten through the plasterboard. I found squirrel droppings in the utility room on Monday. It'd cost me ten thousand pounds to put it all back and me? Idiot me? I don't even know if I'm going to pay my council tax this month. And then ... then today ...'

'Today?'

She dropped her hands from her face and looked at him seriously. 'Can you keep a secret?'

'Funny no one's ever asked me to do that before.'

She gave a watery smile. 'Seriously. It's about Millie. I've promised her not to say anything, but I can't help it. It's all so bizarre I can't keep it a secret. I've got to talk about it.'

He pulled up a chair and sat. 'Go on. I'm listening.'

'She ... needed some money. She knew she couldn't come to me, so she went to someone she shouldn't have. Someone who wants the money back. And he's not the sort of person I know how to deal with he's a drug-dealer.'

'Oh, Christ.'

'I know. I'm just so dense dense.' She knocked her knuckles against her forehead, wis.h.i.+ng she could wake up the dumb, sleepy ma.s.s in there. 'I just never get get it. I didn't see any of this coming, just like I didn't see the divorce coming, and now my only chance of making a decent living is to work for a criminal, and he's rude and you say he's dangerous, but I haven't got any choice because my daughter still thinks she can live like all her rich friends do and will make any stupid decisions because of it and now I'm-' it. I didn't see any of this coming, just like I didn't see the divorce coming, and now my only chance of making a decent living is to work for a criminal, and he's rude and you say he's dangerous, but I haven't got any choice because my daughter still thinks she can live like all her rich friends do and will make any stupid decisions because of it and now I'm-'

'Hey hey hey.' Steve reached across and caught her hand in his. 'Hey. Take it slowly. We can work it out. I mean- Do you want me to speak to this character? Do you know how to get in touch with him?'

'You can't. If you do, Millie will find out. I've promised her not to say a word. Anyway G.o.d knows what he'll do to her if he thinks he's not getting the money. I've thought about it. The only way is for me to pay back what she's borrowed.'

'Then I'll lend you the money. The divorce wasn't kind on me, you know that, but I can find the money. It's not a problem.'

She bit her lip and raised her eyes to his. In his open face, his straightforward smile, she saw a sweet and welcoming slope. A slope that she could step on to with ease. Fall on to and be carried along. It would be comfortable: the fear would go away. But it would lead her nowhere. Eventually she'd come back to the same numbness she'd reached with Julian.

'No,' she said, with an effort. 'No. Thank you, but no. I've got to work this out on my own. David will pay me an extra four hundred and eighty a month so it'll take a while, but I'll do it. And I borrowed a DIY book from the library maybe I can fix some of the house myself. There are some tools in the garage that the last owners left and I can borrow some more from Isabelle.'

'OK.' He smiled. 'And what you can't get from her I'll lend you. Whatever you need.'

She smiled back weakly. 'Thank you,' she said. 'Thank you.'

Steve rose and went to the fridge for the wine bottle, but she couldn't draw the line that easily. She sat, her head on one side, turning her gla.s.s round and round on the table, watching the wet rings cross and recross.

'Steve?' she said, when he sat down again.

'What?'

'You know this morning, what you were saying about David Goldrab?'

His face darkened. He rubbed his chin thoughtfully with a knuckle. 'Yeah,' he said. 'I remember.'

'What did you mean when you said it was just fluke he hadn't been banged up years ago? If he had been put in prison, what would it have been for?'

'Oh, Sally. Are you sure you want to know all this?'

'Yes. I've got my first day at his tomorrow and, honestly, I'm nervous. I can't go on any more with my head in the clouds, always missing the plain b.l.o.o.d.y obvious, always being the last to know anything. Please ...'

Steve shook his head. 'OK. Well, chiefly Goldrab's a p.o.r.nographer.'

'A p.o.r.nographer? What does that mean? He sells magazines?'

'Mostly videos. Downloads on the Internet.'

'A p.o.r.nographer? Are you sure?'

'I'm afraid so. A hundred per cent sure.'

She was surprised to find she wasn't more shocked. 'Gosh all day I've been thinking you meant he was a real criminal.'

Steve gave a dry laugh. 'He is a real criminal, a real, live criminal. One of the richest p.o.r.nographers in the country and that's saying something because we're one of the few nations in the world that doesn't have a thriving p.o.r.n production industry. He makes his living from persuading young women not even women some of them, girls, more like to do things they'll regret for ever. Before the Internet took off he spent a long time in Kosovo making illegal p.o.r.n that he smuggled into the country. And I mean nasty stuff animals, bondage. You name it. People have suffered, I can guarantee that. I'm not going to get all Mr Morals on you, for G.o.d's sake I'm a red-blooded man and and I'm not saying I haven't watched a bit of p.o.r.n in my time but, trust me, a lot of the women he's used didn't have a choice in the matter. They didn't have the freedom. Especially the ones in the Balkans.'

Sally sat in silence, digesting this. She could see the reality and all the subtle equations that came out of it if she was working for someone like that, it kind of made her equal to him, complicit, even. But after all her consideration she knew she wouldn't back out. She needed the money. 'I suppose that makes me pretty desperate, if I'm working for him.'

Steve reached over and pushed her hair behind her ear. 'Sweetheart, we're all all desperate. We all have to do things we're not proud of. That's just the way the world goes round.' desperate. We all have to do things we're not proud of. That's just the way the world goes round.'

22.

It was raining so Zoe took the Mondeo. She parked near the locked gates to Sydney Gardens and prised her way through the bushes. The park was officially closed, but unofficially it was open to business. Everywhere she looked she saw young men loitering, standing casually, hands in pockets, or leaning against trees. One or two were actually sitting on the ground, lounging as if it was midday in August and not a rainy night. As she pa.s.sed most of them melted away into the bushes.

The gate in the wall was set to open out on to the ca.n.a.l but not to allow anyone in at night. A police sign had been placed next to it, warning people that the towpath to the east was blocked due to an incident and advising them to find a different route. Zoe flicked out her torch and shone it at the ground. The rain had eased but earlier it had been heavy enough to fill to the brim the holes left by footsteps in the mud. The little pools glinted back at her in the light. She negotiated round the mud, squeezing through the bushes along the edge, and opened the gate. On the other side of the wall a single Victorian-style streetlamp threw down a yellow glow in a circle on the gravel and the ca.n.a.l water. Zoe ran the torch along the ground and found what she'd expected to find about ten feet away.

A slight depression spanned the path. Maybe some pipe-laying underneath had caused a dip, or a fault in the material. Whatever the cause, it had only taken the smallest amount of rain to join the scattering of puddles into one large lake. There was no way round it. You'd either have to splosh through it or take a running jump. And, she thought, looking back at the gate, if you'd just come through that gate and you were wearing shoes that had got muddy, you would probably use the opportunity to rinse off the mud.

If Lorne had come on to the towpath here she could have cleaned her shoes, and yet there'd still been mud on them when she died. Maybe there was another entrance to the ca.n.a.l, another place she'd stepped in the mud nearer the crime scene. Zoe set off down the path, her hood pulled up, keeping the beam on the ground, sweeping it from side to side. The temperature had dropped and smoke was coming from one or two of the barges, which had shut their doors and lit their wood-burning stoves. The chatter of TVs and the flickering blue light came through the windows.

She'd gone about three hundred yards when a small break in the trees to her left made her stop. It was a tiny s.p.a.ce, no more than a badger run. It rose up, away from the path, then fell into darkness on the other side. Pus.h.i.+ng aside the brambles and trees that crowded into the opening, she shone the light down. She smiled. Mud. And in it there were two clear shoe prints. They looked at a glance to be an almost exact match to Lorne's muddied ballet pumps.

'Oh, Lorne,' she murmured. 'You weren't shopping on Sat.u.r.day at all. You've been lying to us.'

23.

The next morning Millie refused point blank to go to school. She said it was going to be crazy, anyway, with everyone talking about Lorne, and all the speculation, but Sally knew it was more to do with the guy in the purple jeep sitting outside Kingsmead. She wasn't going to force her, but she wasn't going to leave her at Peppercorn alone, not after last night. She called Isabelle, but she was going to be in meetings all day, so, in spite of herself, she called Julian. He too was working all day.

'Please, Mum,' Millie begged. 'Please. Just don't make me go to school.'

She looked at Millie for a long time. This was impossible. Either take her fifteen-year-old daughter to the house of a p.o.r.nographer or let her take her chances with the drug-dealing loan shark. G.o.d, what a tangled web. Still, she had to make a decision.

'You'll spend four hours sitting in the back of the car.'

'I don't care. I'll take a book. I won't be in the way.'

Sally sighed. 'Go and make a sandwich. Then get dressed and I mean dressed dressed. No short skirts and a proper blouse, no skimpy T-s.h.i.+rts. Something sensible sensible. And you'd better bring some of that English homework too four hours is a lot of time to kill.'

It was another fine day, the sun already high in the sky, last night's rain just a memory, but all the way to Lightpil House Sally worried. She kept thinking about what Steve had said about the girls in Kosovo, some of them not even women yet. And then, conversely, she started worrying that David wouldn't let Millie stay, that they'd have to get straight back in the car and turn round, that she'd lose the extra four hundred and eighty pounds a month she'd factored into her sums.

When they pulled into the parking area Millie opened the window and leaned out, blinking in the sun and gazing up at Lightpil House as if she was driving on to a movie set. David Goldrab must have been waiting because before Sally could park he was coming down the long path to meet them. He was wearing his towelling robe and FitFlops, a gla.s.s of green tea in his hand, and a digital heart monitor on his wrist, as if he'd just come off one of the treadmills in the gym on the first floor. Sally pulled on the handbrake and watched him, wondering what he'd do when he saw Millie. Sure enough, when he caught sight of her in the front seat he frowned. 'Who's that?'

'Millie,' she said, bracing herself for an argument. 'My daughter. She won't get in the way.'

David bent down at the driver's window, hands on his thighs, and gave Millie a long, appraising look. 'You staying with us, are you?'

'She'll be out here in the car. She won't bother us.'

'Like pheasants, do you, Princess?'

Millie glanced at her mother.

'It's all right,' said David. 'It's not a trick question. Got to learn to answer questions with honesty. If a person asks you a trick question the only person it shows up is them. So do you like baby pheasants or not?'

'She's staying in the car.'

'Sally, please. She's not a two-year-old. She needs something to occupy herself. Won't come to any harm better than being cooped up in this ...' He paused and gazed at the little Ka, trying to find words to describe its lowliness. 'Yeah. Anyway better you run around in the suns.h.i.+ne, Princess. Now, answer the question. Do you like pheasants?'

'Yes.'

'Good. Then I'll show you where to go and have a look.'

'Don't go out of the grounds,' Sally said. 'And take your phone.'

Millie rolled her eyes. 'I heard you,' she hissed. 'OK?'

Sally took a few deep breaths. She unbuckled her belt and got out of the car. Millie climbed out of the pa.s.senger seat and flattened her blouse with her palms, looking around, clearly impressed by everything she saw and amazed that her mother could somehow, in whatever context, be part of it.

'See that path down there at the side of the house?' David came round the front of the car and pointed down to the edge of the property. 'You follow that and you'll find a gate. There's a padlock. Code's 1983. My date of birth.' He gave a laugh. Neither Sally nor Millie joined in. 'Go through and there's a shed. Full of the little b.u.g.g.e.rs. When you're done, come and sit on the terrace. Mum'll make you a lemonade. Won't you, Sally?'

Millie glanced at her mother. Sally hesitated, feeling sick. But she jerked her head to tell Millie to go. To get on with it. 'Phone,' she mouthed at her. 'Keep your phone phone switched switched on on.'

With another uncertain look at David, Millie set off down the path. He folded his arms and watched her go. She was very thin in her jeans, which were big in the leg but tight on the hips, and her hair bounced and gleamed in the sunlight. Sally watched the way he was eyeing her daughter. She slammed the car door, louder than she needed to, and he turned to her with a lazy smile.

'What? Oh, Sally, I'm disappointed. You think I'm checking her out, don't you? What do you take me for?' He looked back at Millie, who was just disappearing behind the flower borders. 'Do you think I'm some kind of pervert? A man of my age? A girl of that age? She's far, far too old for me.'

Sally stiffened and he roared with laughter, nudging her arm. 'I'm joking joking, girl. Joking. It was just a leetle joke. Go on crack a f.u.c.king smile, can't you? Christ.' He sighed. 'Did you have to pay extra for that stick you've got up your a.r.s.e or did it come free with the convent education?'

Sally swallowed. Her mouth was dry. But she didn't let it show. She went to the car boot and began to get out her cleaning equipment.

'I'm only pulling your leg, girl.'

She took out the black attache case she kept her notepads and pencils in and, without waiting, set off up the path, followed by David, who huffed and puffed and muttered darkly about people with no sense of humour. Inside the house was filled with the smell of bread. He must have been cooking, using the three hundred pounds' worth of automatic bread-maker that sat next to the coffee machine in the kitchen. Sally sucked at the air, pulling it down into her lungs, willing it to calm her. The smell of food always made her nerves go away.

'Know what, Sally?' David said, when they got to the office. 'Don't take this the wrong way, but I have the feeling Sally Benedict doesn't hold David Goldrab in very high esteem. Because that's the way the world works, ain't it? Now, you probably grew up in some place with turrets and stables. Me? Well, there were towers and drawbridges in my past too a tower block with a f.u.c.king great iron security door to stop the junkies off the Isle of Dogs breaking in and s.h.i.+tting in the lift. Which never worked anyway, whether it got used as a toilet or not. Seventeenth floor and no hot water, no heating.'

He sat on his swivel chair, unstrapped the heart monitor, plugged it into the back of a white Sony laptop and began downloading his day's workout readings. Then he used his heels to kick himself across the room to a larger desktop computer and switched it on.

'1957 that was when I was really born, not 1983, in case I had you fooled there. Youngest of three boys it was two to a bed in those days, a mattress on the floor, and count yourself lucky if you got one scabby little square inch of peeling wallpaper to stick your posters on. Always getting your d.i.c.k groped had to sleep like this.' He put his hands over his crotch and bent at the waist as if he'd just taken a cricket ball in the groin. 'Oldest brother turned into a drunk at thirteen. Mum never even noticed, she was that taken up with herself and her own b.l.o.o.d.y misery. He'd come home s.h.i.+t-faced and crash on top of us. Can still smell him, the miserable c.u.n.t. One morning I wake up and the bed's wet. He's wet the f.u.c.king bed, and the moment I sit up in bed, see him lying there all covered in puke and blood and his own p.i.s.s but still breathing, still snoring, I know for sure that if it takes every inch of my energy, every drop of my sweat, if I have to eat s.h.i.+t, kill for it, I'm going to get out of there find my own s.p.a.ce. My Lebensraum Lebensraum.'

He opened his hands to indicate the grounds outside the window. From there the hills rolled away. There was hardly anything, just a few telegraph poles in the far distance, to indicate that there were any other human beings on the planet. The gate Millie had gone through was surrounded by trees throwing giant shadows on to the gra.s.s below. She was nowhere to be seen.

'Lebensraum,' he repeated. 'What Hitler wanted. Sometimes, you know, you have to wonder if Hitler didn't have a point. And there's me, Jewish name, and plenty of Jew blood in me, though not as pure as my a.r.s.e of a father would've liked it and I'm thinking Hitler had a point! My ancestors, G.o.d rest your souls, put your fingers in your ears, but Hitler was was a vegetarian. And he a vegetarian. And he did did like animals. And most of all he liked like animals. And most of all he liked s.p.a.ce s.p.a.ce. s.p.a.ce to breathe, s.p.a.ce to live, s.p.a.ce to sleep. s.p.a.ce not to be groped and p.i.s.sed on by your slag slag of a brother. And that's what you're here for, Sally, to run my of a brother. And that's what you're here for, Sally, to run my Lebensraum Lebensraum. And to keep it like that. Peaceful. Lacking in human clutter.'

The heart monitor had finished downloading its data. David spent some time studying it. Then, seeming satisfied, he switched off the computer.

'Course,' he said, with a half-glance up at her, 'if I had my druthers I'd have a woman in my life, little golden-haired thing with big knockers, a good head for figures, and a problem in the nymphomaniac department. But I know women most of you've only got one thing on your mind, and it doesn't begin with S. So, Sally, come and sit here.' He drew another chair up next to him in front of the computer. 'Come here and let me show you what I want you to do.'

Sally sat next to him. He smelt vaguely of sweat and aftershave. She couldn't stop thinking about the women in the Balkans, about whether he'd told them them his life story. his life story.

'Now ...' he waved a hand around the office '... this is Tracy Island the nerve centre of Goldrab Enterprises. We're sitting in the personal section. That, over there, that's the money-making part.'

He was pointing to where a desk sat piled high with files and another computer. There was a filing cabinet next to the desk and, mounted above that, a huge monitor showing the view of the driveway from the security camera in the front. Once she'd been cleaning here and had noticed a pile of paperwork on top of that cabinet. She hadn't looked too closely but she recalled invoices in a foreign language. The name Pritina had jumped out. At the time she'd thought it was the name of a city in Russia. Now, thinking about what Steve had said, she guessed it must be Kosovo.

'Sally, I don't want you going home with the idea I don't trust you, because of course I do. But you won't mind me pointing out that my work is confidential. I prefer to keep it that way. In other words, if I catch you snooping around there I'll shoot you in the f.u.c.king eye.' He gave a fat, pleased smile when he saw her reaction. 'A joke. Another joke joke. Jesus, the sense-of-humour fairy is definitely AWOL this morning, ain't she? Now, on this this computer I keep the database for the house. See? So this is where you work. You enter the invoices here, and the receipts computer I keep the database for the house. See? So this is where you work. You enter the invoices here, and the receipts here here. It's not rocket science. You make the calls, get the estimates, organize the workers. Just try to make it so everyone comes on the same day so I'm not running around every morning thinking, I've got to get my drawers on p.r.o.nto cos the bleeding plumber's on his way.'

'OK,' she said quietly.

'And smile smile, for f.u.c.k's sake. Crack a bleeding smile. It's like looking at a s.h.a.gging slapped a.r.s.e, looking at you-'

He broke off and jerked to his feet, staring at the CCTV monitor on the wall. 'Holy Jesus,' he muttered under his breath. 'The scabby little b.u.msucker.'

On the lane outside was parked a small j.a.panese jeep in a metallic purple, with s.h.i.+ny chrome bull-bars. Sally stared at it. The dealer from Kingsmead? It couldn't be. Here at David Goldrab's? As if he'd followed followed them? The window opened and an arm came out, jabbing at the keypad on the gate. It was him. She recognized the hair and the suntan. She spun round and stared out of the window. Millie had appeared on the lawn. Maybe she'd already seen the pheasants, maybe she wasn't interested anyway, but for some reason she had settled on the gra.s.s, lying on her stomach, her phone in both hands, busily texting or browsing, or updating her Facebook page. Sally got up, dithering, not sure what to do, whether to run through the kitchen and yell, or to get her phone and call her. them? The window opened and an arm came out, jabbing at the keypad on the gate. It was him. She recognized the hair and the suntan. She spun round and stared out of the window. Millie had appeared on the lawn. Maybe she'd already seen the pheasants, maybe she wasn't interested anyway, but for some reason she had settled on the gra.s.s, lying on her stomach, her phone in both hands, busily texting or browsing, or updating her Facebook page. Sally got up, dithering, not sure what to do, whether to run through the kitchen and yell, or to get her phone and call her.

On screen the man was still jabbing in numbers, though evidently he didn't know the code, because the gates stayed resolutely closed. David didn't seem perturbed in the slightest. He was leaning back in his chair, his hands behind his head, a nasty smile on his face. 'Oh, Jake,' he said, to the monitor. 'Jake the Peg. You didn't ought to be coming back here, mate. No. You really didn't ought to be doing that.'

24.

Taking casts of footprints and comparing them to shoes was generally one of the quicker jobs forensics teams did. No waiting around for lengthy lab tests. By eleven o'clock that morning the results from the ca.n.a.l path had come back. The prints Zoe had found last night had been made by Lorne Wood. And when the police looked at the path that led away from the gap in the trees they saw there was only one route she could have taken to get there. From the ca.n.a.l the track led through a small wooded area, then along a path that ran between two horse paddocks, under a railway bridge and out to a bus stop. Nowhere near the shops. Lorne had lied to her mother about where she had been that Sat.u.r.day and, in Zoe's book, if a person could lie about something like that, there was no knowing what else they could lie about the fibs could roll on and on, as far as the horizon.