Hanging Hill - Mo Hayder [131]
She found what she was searching for and sat back on her heels, resting it on her lap. The tin. She lifted it and blew off the earth. The few oddments inside rattled. David’s teeth. His ring. She opened the lid and stared at them. Steve had called from the departures lounge at Sea-Tac. He’d finished the meeting, caught four hours’ sleep in the hotel, then gone back to the airport and brought his flight back to England forward. It was going to Heathrow and was leaving Seattle in four hours. It would be early tomorrow morning before he was home. She’d told him about the lipstick at Kelvin’s house, how it must have been him who’d left the message on her seat.
‘But I told you. I can deal with it on my own. You didn’t need to cut it short.’
‘I know you can, but you don’t have to. There are things you’re going to have to do that I don’t want you to do alone.’
‘Things?’
‘Sally, you and I have already done things neither of us ever thought we could. And it’s not stopping now. We have to go on to the end of the road.’
We have to go on to the end of the road …
She knew what he meant. There were places at the gamekeeper’s cottage she could leave the teeth. She could bury them, or wait until Kelvin was out and get into the house. Hide them somewhere careful. A place he wouldn’t think to look, but a place the police would. And while she was there she could search the parts of the house she hadn’t been able to earlier – check there really were no photos of her and Steve in the parking space. It was what Zoë would do, something clever like this. Zoë would do it, she would survive.
She got to her feet, put the lid back on the tin, slid it inside her jacket, and felt for her car keys. If she didn’t do it now, she never would. She walked up the lane to the car, fast, her head down. Opened the door, threw the tin on to the passenger seat and swung inside. She started the engine and reversed up the drive, the familiar petrolly fumes coming in through the rattly back windows.
29
The boards outside creaked. Kelvin was walking leisurely along the landing, sauntering as if he was out in a park on a sunny day. He went to the front bedroom first. Zoë heard him throwing the boxes around. He was humming to himself. He had all the time in the world.
She grabbed the fleece, dragged it across the floorboards towards her and patted the pockets. Pulled out a mobile phone. Looked at it, her pulse racing. A white iPhone. It was Lorne’s. She put her head back, her heart thudding like a jack-hammer. She’d been right. Right. Those arguments she’d had with Ben and Deborah, that Lorne’s killer wasn’t a teenager, she’d been right. And she’d been right to circle Goldrab and the porn industry – Lorne had met Kelvin through either Goldrab or the nightclubs. There couldn’t be any other way a girl like her would have a connection to a man like Kelvin. God, Lorne, I’m sorry, she thought. For a while I lost sight of you. But you were there all along. I just never expected it to happen like this.
His footsteps stopped in the doorway. She tried the phone but the battery was dead, so she pushed it into the fleece pocket. She could see his blue Hunters in the doorway. Usually she’d be wearing a police radio, but she’d left it in the car. Stealthily she reached into her pocket for her own phone. The wellingtons came across the floor. Before she could even check the phone for a signal, Kelvin Burford crouched and his hands appeared, grabbing her ankles. She scrambled for the slats under the bed, dropping the phone in her haste. It skimmed across the floor, spinning, hitting the skirting-board. Kelvin braced one foot on the bed base to get leverage and pulled at her feet. She held on tight to the slats. He tugged again, and this time her grip weakened. The nail on her index finger tore away. She let go and he dragged her out, across the floor on her stomach,