Hanging Hill - Mo Hayder [126]
A breeze came through the wood, making the branches lift and sigh. Slowly she began to head up the hill towards the cottage. Closer, she saw how old and threadbare it was. There were animal traps everywhere and more bales of chicken wire piled against the wall. He attacked a girl in Radstock – went to prison for it.
The front door was flaked and old, with years of scuffing from wellingtons and maybe dogs. A name, faded by sun and rain to a pink, illegible smudge, had been written on paper and fastened under the bell with a rusting drawing pin. She stood on the step, put her head near the letterbox and listened. Silence. She went around to the back, looking up at the windows, trying to see a way in. Dirty scraps of lace curtain hung behind most of the panes, blocking her view, but she could see through the windows in the back extension – to a galley-shaped kitchen with yellow Formica cabinets. There was a packet of Weetabix on the table, a dirty plate next to it and a couple of Heineken tins flattened ready for the rubbish. No one to be seen. To her surprise, when she stepped back she noticed the door was open a fraction.
She stared at it, her legs suddenly like wood.
No. You can’t …
But she did. She opened the door. The kitchen was small, the floor muddy, and the cupboards streaked with dirt at calf height, as if someone had been walking around wearing wellingtons. At the end a doorway led to the hall. Cautiously, she tiptoed over to it and peered through. It was a small hallway panelled in dark wood. No sound or movement. Just a curtain lifting lazily at the landing window.
There were two rooms opening from the main passageway. With a quick glance upstairs she went to the first, at the front, and peeped round the door. It was a small parlour, still with its picture rails and ornately tiled fireplace intact. The curtains were drawn but enough light was coming through for her to see it was almost empty – just an expensive TV on a black stand positioned about four feet in front of a sofa. The walls were bare, scruffy with years of grime. It didn’t look like the home of someone organized, a person with the sort of technological know-how to have photographed or videoed people in a distant parking space.
The second room, at the back, had been turned into a makeshift office, with an IKEA flatpack desk, covered with piles of paperwork, and a swivel chair, all muddied and scuffed. She went to the desk and began opening drawers. In the top two she found a few boxes of shotgun cartridges and an oil-stained bandoleer. In the bottom one there was a small handbook, divided into sections marked ‘Beaters’, ‘Dogs’, ‘Clients’. She was about to close it when she saw something gold glinting up at her. She squatted and tentatively moved things around it until she could see what it was. A lipstick case. She took it out, removed the lid and twisted up the lipstick. The little that was left of it was a distinct orange-red. She put her head against the desk and took long breaths, thinking of the little boy she’d played Lego with all those years ago, wondering why he’d grown up so angry and dangerous. And what he wanted from her.
A noise from the front of the house. Nothing much, just a vague whisper. Moving silently she closed the drawer, straightened and went to peer down the hall to the front door. The breeze outside was stronger now. It was making the curtains on the landing flutter, sending shadows like flapping wings on to the hall floor. A figure moved on the other side of the frosted glass.
She shot a glance behind her at the kitchen. The door was still open. Another noise and then, shattering the silence, the person began to knock at the