Hanging Hill - Mo Hayder [136]
The trees didn’t quite have their full summer growth on them, and she could see a long way ahead. She could see the zigzaggy green splash of lawns. Maybe the edge of the estate that neighboured Goldrab’s. She pushed her wobbly legs on, breathing through her swollen mouth, crashing through dead wood and leaves, waxy green carpets of wild garlic in the corners of her eyes. Eventually the wood gave out to a sweep of grass so clipped and green it could have been a golf course. Beyond it she saw a pale Cotswold chippings driveway and a spectacular stone mansion basking in the sun, with turrets and stone urns on the parapets. A Land Rover stood in the driveway. She ran to it and tugged at the doors – locked – continued, breathing hard now, past another car, past cold frames and a walled garden where white peonies and early roses grew, each neatly labelled. The front door had a huge old knocker – a Jacob Marley – and she hammered on it, the noise echoing through the house and out across the grounds. She glanced anxiously over her shoulder up the lawn. There was no sign of Kelvin in the trees.
‘Hello?’ She opened the letterbox and yelled through it. ‘Anyone home?’
No answer. She limped along the front of the house, catching sight of tasselled curtains inside the leaded windows, her reflection moving across them – hair all over the place, her nose swollen to twice its normal size. She rounded the corner and made her way past dustbins, a pile of sawn logs, two cans of oil. She hammered on the back door, put her hand up to shade her eyes and peered through the windows. She saw an elegant painted kitchen, a central island, an Aga. No lights or sound. She went back to the corner of the house, and as she did she saw him. Just a blur in the trees, his red and black shirt a patch of moving colour – running down to the lawn with his arms out at his sides. She turned and began to head towards the front of the house, to the driveway that led to the road. Immediately she saw her mistake – she’d be in the open on the driveway. She hesitated. There was a wheelie bin next to one of the dustbins. She opened it and looked inside. It was almost empty – just one tied carrier bag of rubbish at the bottom – and it was solidly placed against the wall. It didn’t move as she swung in one leg, then the other, landing in the bottom, reaching above her head to pull the lid closed.
It was dark and warm in the bin. She couldn’t hear anything outside, just the hot percussive in and out of her own panting bouncing off the plastic walls. She wiped the sweat off her forehead and carefully lifted the carrier bag to her knees, silently using her fingernails to slit a hole in the plastic. Inside were the remains of a kid’s packed lunch – a couple of squashed drinks packets, a screwed-up ball of silver foil with crumbs on it, a wad of napkins printed with blue dinosaurs – and three baked-beans cans. She pulled the lid out of one of the cans and put it between her knees, crushing with all her might until it folded into two. Then she reversed it and folded it again. She did it three times before it split along the folded edge. She held it against her fingertip – sharp. It would work if she got the right angle.
Footsteps sounded on the gravel. Kelvin. She held her breath, raised the tin lid in both hands above her head. He went past getting so close she could hear his breathing, a raspy, deep-barrelled noise. He wasn’t fit in spite of his job and his army background: the drink and the cigarettes had taken their toll. She could have outrun him, could have got to the road if she’d just had the confidence. She heard him go round the house twice, circling like a buzzard, passing