Hanging Hill - Mo Hayder [102]
DC Goods called from town. Zoë had told him that Jake the Peg was in trouble again and given him the task of finding support for Jake’s alibi. Already he was unearthing evidence: the staff at River Island remembered him, and they had the CCTV footage to prove it. From a glance at the photo, the manager of the cinema too was almost certain she remembered Jake. She was having a look at the time-coded CCTV footage even as they spoke. His alibi for that night seemed watertight. Zoë found she wasn’t much surprised at that: it had felt too easy a solution for Jake to have been the one who had made Goldrab disappear.
She opened an email from the technical team at HQ. The freeze frames of the porn footage lifted from Goldrab’s computers had come back and none of the women was Lorne. She stared at the images, trying to force Lorne’s features into the girls’ faces, but she couldn’t. Again, she wondered if Goldrab’s disappearance was totally coincidental. Did that mean she was leaving Lorne behind by chasing what had happened to Goldrab? She looked at the photo of Lorne pinned to the wall. Come on, she thought, you brought me here, so you tell me – what do I do now? You know I really want David Goldrab. Do I go after it? Or is he nothing to do with you?
There was a knock at the door. She made sure her shirt was straight and tucked in and that her cuffs were buttoned, then swivelled the chair to the door. ‘Yup?’
Ben put his head round the door.
‘Oh.’ Her head felt suddenly heavy, her feet like lead. ‘Ben.’
‘Hi.’
They regarded each other without speaking. Somewhere down the corridor a phone rang. A door at the other end of the building banged. What, she wondered, was the grown-up way to deal with Ben? How would a normal person address what had happened between them? She didn’t know. Hadn’t a clue.
Eventually Ben saved her by speaking. ‘Have you heard?’
‘Heard what?’
‘About Ralph?’
‘What about him?’
‘I thought you should be the first to know.’ He glanced up at her whiteboard, where Ralph’s name was written with a big red line through it. For the first time she noticed dark rings under Ben’s eyes. He’d been working hard. ‘He tried to commit suicide. Two hours ago. His mother found him.’
‘Christ.’ She remembered Ralph crouching here on the floor, his back to the wall, his tears wetting the carpet. ‘Is he going to be OK?’
‘They don’t know yet. He left a note, though. It said, “Lorne, I’m sorry.”’
Zoë leaned back in the chair, her hands resting on her thighs, her eyes closed. She felt the long, hard drag of the past few days hanging on her.
‘Zoë?’
She dropped her chin. Opened one eye and locked it on him. ‘What?’
He scratched his head, glanced at the whiteboard, then back at her. ‘Nothing,’ he said. ‘Nothing. Just thought you should know.’
14
Sally took a long time to go back to sleep after the dream. It seemed she’d slept only minutes before Steve’s alarm was going off. He had a meeting to attend, he’d told her, in London. He hadn’t said what, but they both knew it was with Mooney. To get the money. He showered and dressed while Sally lay in bed, trying to get rid of the dregs of the dream. He didn’t eat breakfast, but walked around anxiously, drinking a mug of coffee, hunting for his keys and his sat nav. He told Sally not to call him, he’d call her.
She sat at the window in her dressing-gown and watched the car pull left out of the driveway, which led away from the lane along a narrow track into the woods. It was down there, in true Famous Five style, that they’d dug a hole under the trunk of a tree and buried David’s teeth and ring in a tin. She waited at the window until, twenty minutes later, Steve’s car reappeared from the woods and sailed past the drive. Yes. He was going to see Mooney. He was going to get the money. And tomorrow he was going to America