Hanging Hill - Mo Hayder [0]
What if you found yourself divorced and penniless? With no skills and a teenage daughter to support? What if the only way to survive was to do things you never thought possible?
These are questions Sally has never really thought about before. Married to a successful businessman, she’s always been a bit of a dreamer. Until now.
Her sister Zoe is her polar opposite. A detective inspector working out of Bath Central, she loves her job, and oozes self-confidence. No one would guess that she hides a crippling secret that dates back twenty years, and which – if exposed – may destroy her.
Then Sally’s daughter gets into difficulties, and Sally finds she needs cash – lots of it – fast. With no one to help her, she is forced into a criminal world of extreme pornography and illegal drugs; a world in which teenage girls can go missing.
Two sisters intent on survival. Until one does something so terrifying that there’s no way back …
Contents
Cover
About the Book
Title Page
Prologue
Part One
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Part Two
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Part Three
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Acknowledgements
About the Author
Also by Mo Hayder
Copyright
HANGING
HILL
MO HAYDER
The funeral was held in an Anglican church on a hill just outside the ancient spa town of Bath. Over a thousand years old, the church was no bigger than a chapel, and its driveway was too small for the reporters and photographers who jostled each other for a good vantage-point. It was a warm day, the smells of grass and honeysuckle drifting across the graveyard as the mourners arrived. Some deer, which were used to coming here in the afternoons to nibble moss from the gravestones, were startled by the activity. They bounded away, leaping the low stone walls and disappearing into the surrounding forests.
As people filed into the church two women stayed outside, sitting motionless on a bench under a white buddleia. Butterflies swatted and flitted around the blooms over their heads but the women didn’t raise their eyes to look. They were united in their silence – in their numbness and disbelief at the string of events that had led them to this place. Sally and Zoë Benedict. Sisters, though no one would know it to look at them. The tall, rangy one was Zoë, the elder by a year; her sister Sally, much smaller and more contained, still had the round, uncluttered face of a child. She sat looking down at her small hands and the tissue she’d been kneading and tearing into shreds.
‘It’s harder than I expected,’ she said. ‘I mean – I don’t know if I can go in. I thought I could, but now I’m not so sure.’
‘Me neither,’ Zoë murmured. ‘Me neither.’
They sat for a while in silence. One or two people came up the steps – people they didn’t recognize. Then some of Millie’s friends: Peter and Nial. Awkward-looking in their formal suits, their formal expressions.
‘His sister’s here,’ Zoë said, after a while. ‘I spoke to her on the steps.’
‘His sister? I didn’t know he had one.’
‘He does.’
‘Strange to think he’d have a family.