Hanging Hill - Mo Hayder [117]
She turned over the wipes and studied them. For this to have been imprinted on her dress it must have been there since she’d got into the car. It had been parked overnight at Steve’s, on his driveway. She tried to recall if she’d locked it. She never did at Peppercorn, so maybe she hadn’t last night. Maybe kids had got into it.
She spread out the wipes and moved them around until they fitted together. The letters were blurred, some of them missing, and the ones she could work out were in reverse. She found a ‘Y’, then a ‘G’ and then a ‘W’. She saw ‘ITCH’, the letters in sequence, and, quite clearly, ‘EVIL’. Another ‘Y’ and ‘ITH’, then the whole thing tumbled suddenly into place.
You won’t get away with it. You evil bitch.
Trembling she shot to her feet, almost banging her head against the car roof. She spun round, as if someone might be standing behind her, watching. All she could see for hundreds of yards in every direction were cars, the heads of one or two travellers moving among them. She slammed the door and started off towards the terminal at a trot. Then, realizing Steve had already gone through into Departures, she raced back to the car and fumbled her phone out of the bag, dropping things in her haste. She dialled his number, her fingers like jelly. There was a pause, then an electronic hum, and the phone connected to his voicemail.
‘This is Steve. If you’d like to leave a message I’ll …’
She cancelled the call and stood in the glaring sunshine, her hands on the roof of the car, breathing hard, the truth coming down on her like a cloud.
Someone, somehow, knew exactly what she and Steve had done to David Goldrab.
22
The motel was one of those places with sealed windows to stop the traffic noise, squeezy soap mounted on the walls and vending machines in the foyer. Signs everywhere guaranteed your money back if you didn’t get a good night’s sleep. It was ten miles outside London on the M4, and the moment Zoë saw it she pulled off the motorway and booked a room. She didn’t intend to sleep there – all she needed was a place to lie down for a couple of hours and think – but she dutifully carried her helmet and few belongings in, and asked the receptionist for a toothbrush in a plastic wrap.
In the room she opened the window a crack, took off her boots and lay on her back, legs crossed. She draped her bike balaclava over her eyes, crossed her hands over her chest and began shuffling her thoughts around, trying to make them sit down in a proper straight line so she could decide what to do next. Whether to keep champing at the Mooney bit or call it a day and head back to Bath. What would it mean to her if she saw Goldrab dead, and all the things he knew about her past locked away? Did she think that now she’d apologized to Sally it was going to make her clean suddenly? Clean like Debbie Harry? The sort of clean Ben would like? She had the idea that uncleanness was a state of mind, which, once installed, never went away. Like Lady Macbeth’s spot of blood.
She took long, calming breaths. Began working it all out. But the travel and the last few sleepless nights got the better of her. Within five minutes she was asleep.
She dreamed of the room again, the nursery with the snow falling outside. Except this time she was on the floor, feeling very small and very scared and, terrifyingly, Sally was standing above her. She was holding the broken hand over Zoë. It was wrecked, with bones sticking out at all angles, and the blood dripped out of it,