Hanging Hill - Mo Hayder [152]
She hooked out the phone and whispered into it, ‘Don’t answer this, Sally. I’m at the front door, can’t hear anything inside. I’m going to go in now. I’ll be on the ground floor. Start counting slowly. I’ll speak to you again before you get to three hundred. If I don’t, make that call.’
She returned the phone to her pocket, straightened and stood in the doorway. Trying to put height and weight into her shoulders. It wasn’t how you should enter premises, but police school and uniform seemed a lifetime ago and she had to struggle to recall the routine. She held the CS gas at arm’s length and took two steps into the hallway. Waited. Took two more. She stood at the door to the living room, put her head round it, gave it a quick glance, snapped her head back. Nothing. Just a lot of chairs and tables sitting in a silent circle, as if they were having a quiet conversation in the absence of their owners. Then the music room – empty too.
She closed the doors – that much she did recall from training: close the rooms you’ve cleared – and continued down the hallway, checking, throwing switches, closing doors. By the time she got to the back of the house the ground floor was blazing with light. She lifted the phone to her mouth. ‘Nothing so far,’ she murmured. ‘I’m going upstairs. Start counting again.’
The stairs creaked as she climbed, even though she tried to place her feet on the edges, where the boards were supported. This was an old house – it wasn’t neat and painted and scrubbed and nailed down. It had nicks and bumps and the bruises of a lifetime. On the landing, a paper Chinese lantern hanging from the ceiling moved slowly from side to side as she disturbed the air. There were six doors. She worked through them methodically, pushing the ones that were nearly closed with her toe, holding up the CS gas as they swung open. In each one she left the light burning, the door closed. It wasn’t until she came to the last bedroom, Nial’s, that she found any sign of Millie. There, heaped on the bed, were a pair of girl’s trainers and a sweater with Millie’s name stitched on the label inside. She picked it up and went back downstairs.
The kitchen was the sort of middle-class kitchen you saw a lot in Bath, with cabinets painted a dull leaden green and lots of garden flowers in plain, clouded-glass bottles on every window-sill. Double doors led outside to a garden that was invisible behind the reflection of the room. On the bleached oak island in the middle sat two school rucksacks, the name ‘Kingsmead’ on them. A tin marked ‘Cakes’ was open, a solitary cupcake inside, and there were two coffee cups in the sink. The tap dripped on them. A plinking punctuation to the silence.
‘You can come in now,’ she said, into her phone. ‘No one here.’
She went to the table, where two opened cans of Stella Artois sat. She lifted one and shook it. Beer sloshed around on the inside. The drinks had just been left. Like the meals on the Mary Celeste. She saw a small door by the fridge, and when she tapped it with her foot it opened to reveal a utility room, with a sink, a washing-machine and the usual clutter – mops and buckets in the corner, a pair of secateurs on a hook on the wall. The door that led out of the room to the back caught her attention. It was ajar.
She went to it and pushed it open. There was a step down on to a stone patio and beyond it a wide black expanse that must be the lawn. It was surrounded by trees, the sky blocked by their huge inky crowns, the branches moving almost imperceptibly against the blue clouds. She stood for a moment in the doorway, listening to the night. The gentle shush-shush of the leaves. The plink-plink of the tap dripping behind her.
This house wasn’t far from Pollock’s Farm – in fact, the garden must back right on to it. She’d been called out here enough times to know. The last time had been in a thick autumn mist, the day old man Pollock’s body had been hauled out by men who’d been wearing protective suits, he was so decayed. She’d vowed never to come back to that godforsaken