Hanging Hill - Mo Hayder [112]
‘The Krugerrands? They won’t. Trust me.’ He picked up his suitcase. ‘It’s going to be OK.’
Sally was subdued on the drive to the airport. The Audi would need to be repaired so they took her car, Steve driving, the window open, the radio on full blast, as if he didn’t have a worry in the world. She sat hunched on the passenger seat, her handbag clenched on her lap, staring out of the window at the Bristol suburbs, at the sunshine in sharp, blocky shapes on the dingy houses. She wondered whether Zoë sometimes came to Bristol. Of course she must – all the time. She’d been all around the world. Zoë’s face as she had stood at the table came back to Sally then, saying, ‘I apologize.’ She tried to imagine the image being taken away from her, pulled like a grey thread out of her head, out of the car window, whipped away by the slipstream, like a twisting ghost.
She and Steve didn’t speak much as they parked, made their way out of the sunshine into the terminal, through Check-in and up the escalator. They were already calling his flight, so he went straight to Security. It was after she’d kissed him goodbye and was walking away, her head down, that he stopped her.
‘Sally?’
She came to a halt, ten feet away, and turned. He was standing in the security line, facing her, the other passengers streaming past him. He wore an odd expression. He was rubbing his fingers together, studying them curiously. ‘What? What is it?’
He was frowning. He opened his hand to show her. ‘Lipstick?’
She walked back to him and together they looked at the lipstick on his fingers. A sort of orangey-red. ‘Where did that come from?’
‘I don’t know. Just from when I kissed you …’ He put his hand on her shoulder and rotated her away from him, looking at her back. ‘It’s on your dress. Look.’
Sally craned around, pulling the seat of the dress out to inspect. He was right – the back of her dress was covered with lipstick. A very distinct orange-red colour.
‘Did you brush up against something?’
‘I don’t think so.’ She strained to see it. ‘There’s lots of it.’
‘You have – you’ve leaned up against something. Here.’ Steve pulled out a folded handkerchief, made to rub at the cloth.
‘It’s OK. Don’t.’ She took it from him, let go of her dress and put the handkerchief back in his top pocket. ‘Don’t worry, I’ll sort it out. You’ll be late.’ She kissed his cheek and gave him a gentle push towards the security checkpoint. ‘Go on.’
He took one last look at her dress. ‘You sure?’
‘Of course. Safe journey. Call me when you get there.’
20
Dominic Mooney’s Who’s Who entry hadn’t been updated since his return from Kosovo. It read:
Born: Hong Kong, 20 Sept. 1955; s of Paul and Jean Mooney; m 1990, Paulette Frampton; one s
Education: Kings, Canterbury; Edinburgh Univ, BA Hons; RMA Sandhurst
Career: Military service 1976–1988, UK, Belize and Northern Ireland (1979–80). Civil service 1986–present: 1986–99 Defence Procurement Agency; 1999–2001 Civil Secretariat, Kosovo; 2001–2004 TPIU Priština
Address: 3 Rightstock Gardens, Finchley, London N3
Zoë knew that on the first line ‘one s’ meant that Mooney had one son – who was probably a teenager and too old to go on holiday with his parents. It took her no time to find him online. She started after the morning meeting, searched Mooney/Kosovo and found him within ten minutes: Jason Mooney. He had posted just about his entire life story online, including the time his dad had spent in Kosovo. (No mention of the women and the aborted half-brothers and sisters.) He was a nice-looking boy, suntanned in the way happy students always seemed to be in their Facebook pictures. He liked swimming, and Punk, a club in Soho Street, and thought Pixie Lott was about the hottest woman on the planet. He had tattoos in Hindi on his left ankle, still wore a friendship bracelet his best mate had given him when he was twelve and was a fresher at City University, studying aeronautical engineering. His shoot-for-the-stars ambition was to work on a privately financed team sending a probe into outer