Hanging Hill - Mo Hayder [111]
‘Anywhere I could go and visit him?’
Zhang snorted. ‘Yeah – hang on a minute. I’ll just write the address down.’
‘What I mean,’ Zoë said slowly, ‘is how do we work it from here? Who backs off? Who scratches whose back? I mean, I’ve got primacy on Goldrab, which means I’ve got a right to investigate his connection to Mooney.’
‘And we’ve got primacy on what Mooney did in Kosovo. And the bulk of the evidence.’ Watling shook her head. ‘Please – we’ve spent years on this, Zoë. Years. You can’t calculate the man hours. Everything’s in place – just teetering like that.’ She held up a hand and seesawed it, like a car on a clifftop. ‘Mooney’s arrest’s scheduled for next week. But he’s a flight risk – if he gets even a whiff of this there’s any number of ways he can disappear out of the country. His secretary’s already getting windy from your phone calls because you said the CID word, didn’t you? Forgive me but you’ve already jeopardized the case. One more cock-up now and we’re going to lose the whole thing. No.’ She placed two hands on the desk. As if she’d made up her mind and it was all over. ‘We’ll take on Goldrab’s disappearance, share our SPA disclosure files when it’s all tied up. You get the results without the work. Goldrab can’t be that important to you, can he?’
‘Yes. He can.’
‘Why?’
‘For all the usual reasons,’ she said sweetly. ‘Like when I close the case and my superintendent hangs out the bunting for me. When every plain-clothed officer in Bath lines up and sings, “We love you, Zoë,” as I walk through the briefing room. When bluebirds come in and tidy my desk every morning.’
‘Any of the glory we can spare we’ll pass on to you. You have my word. You’ll get your bunting, Zoë. You will. Bluebirds and whatever.’
She nodded and smiled. If they were in the movies, the way Zhang said, this would be the point at which she’d argue, refuse to have the case wrested from her. Why did they always do it like that? she thought. What did people have against just nodding, making a promise, then getting the hell on with whatever they’d intended doing in the first place? In her experience it saved a lot of trouble.
She gave a long sigh and sat back in her chair, arms flopping open. ‘OK. OK. But if there’s going to be bunting, I get to choose the colour.’
19
It was late and Millie wanted to stay with the Sweetmans, have a sleepover with Sophie. Apparently they were friends again. Sally wouldn’t have agreed after what had happened tonight, but maybe, she thought a little hopefully, Millie would spend time not just with Sophie but with Nial too. Get Peter Cyrus out of her head. And anyway, Steve insisted, Jake wasn’t a problem now: Sally could relax, she could come to his place and they could get drunk, celebrate the end of the whole bloody awful affair. Secretly she was glad. It gave her a chance to escape the silences that seemed to be building in the fields surrounding Peppercorn Cottage.
They stayed up late drinking a sweet dessert wine Steve had found for ten euros a bottle in a supermarket in Bergerac. They had sex twice – once on the kitchen counter with their clothes still on, and once much later in bed, under the covers, when they were very drunk and Sally couldn’t stop hiccuping or giggling. Things seemed almost normal on the surface. Even so, the last thing she did before she went to sleep was open the windows so the unfamiliar city noises would come into the room and get into her dreams – maybe stop Zoë, or David Goldrab sitting up in the field and grabbing her arm.
She woke late, her head thick and heavy, to a morning as hot as midsummer. She and Steve ate breakfast on the terrace. They drank cranberry juice and ate fresh raspberries. Today he was going to America and she had thought she was ready for that, but when, after breakfast, she came into the hallway to find him dressed in a suit, luggage on the floor next to him, she felt suddenly cold.
‘What if something happens? What if I get questioned again? I won’t know what to say.’
‘You won’t get questioned again. It won’t happen.’
‘What happens if someone