Hanging Hill - Mo Hayder [153]
She turned back to the kitchen and her foot hit something. Looking down she saw a phone. She crouched and picked it up. It was a black Nokia. She hit the on switch. Nothing happened. The battery was dead. She turned it over and saw the casing was cracked.
‘Zoë?’
She jumped. Sally was standing in the kitchen doorway, her face white. Her hands were trembling. She was holding the axe.
‘It’s OK,’ Zoë said. ‘There’s no one here.’
Sally’s eyes darted around the utility room. Her jaw was clenched tight. She looked like she might snap in half.
‘Put the axe down,’ Zoë said. ‘Put it down.’
Slowly she lowered it. ‘That’s hers,’ she said, staring at the sweater Zoë was holding. ‘It’s the only one she’s got. She’ll be freezing without it.’
Zoë held the phone out. ‘And this?’
Sally leaned over to peer at it. She gave a small twitch when she saw what it was and closed her eyes. She put her hand out to the wall, as if she was going to faint.
‘Sally? Sally? Come on – keep it together.’
45
Sally blinked. She saw her sister’s face close to hers. Behind her the little utility room was swaying, the colours bleary. She kept remembering Millie on the tarot card, her face, smudged and smeared and ruined. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said, and her voice sounded miles away. ‘I’m sorry. I got it all so wrong.’
‘Call Nial.’
Isabelle had been right that the tarot was a warning, but it hadn’t been about Jake. It had been a warning about this: all along she’d been warned about tonight.
‘Hey,’ Zoë hissed. ‘Did you hear what I said? Call him.’
‘Yes. Yes.’ She pulled out her phone and tried to dial but her fingers didn’t seem to work. They seemed to be miles away – miles and miles away, as if her arms were very long.
‘Give it to me.’
Zoë grabbed the phone, put it on speaker and dialled Nial’s number. The ringing was distant and lonely. Like part of the invisible dark world out there, funnelling through this tiny channel to reach them. This time there was no answer. It rang four times. Five. Then it went to answerphone.
Zoë shook her head. She took the phone off speaker and dialled again, this time putting it in her pocket and holding it tight against her hip. She took a step out on to the patio, her eyes fixed on the trees.
‘What is it?’ Sally murmured. ‘What’s going on?’
Zoë put a finger to her mouth. ‘Listen.’
Sally came to stand next to her sister and listened to the breathless night. Now she could hear it – a phone ringing faintly in the darkness. It was coming from somewhere far beyond the trees at the bottom of the garden. But just as she thought she’d got an exact direction on it, the ringing stopped. The answerphone again. Quickly Zoë scrabbled the phone out of her pocket and dialled again. The ghostly ringing came again, floating up from the darkness.
‘Pollock’s Farm,’ Zoë murmured.
Sally’s heart sank even lower. She thought about the acres of abandoned land. The decaying farm machinery. The drop and the deserted house at the bottom of it where a man had lain rotting for week after week. ‘God, no,’ she murmured. ‘That’s where they are. Isn’t it?’
‘Come on. Let’s go.’
They checked in the garage and found a huge dragon lamp with a rubberized handle, like the one Steve had bought Sally – it seemed a million years ago. Zoë switched it on to check the battery was charged – it sent a blinding white circle on to the wall, making both women squint. She used a canvas strap to loop it around her neck, and then they went around collecting everything they could carry. Zoë had the hammer in her belt, CS gas in her back pocket, and a large mallet – the type for knocking in fence posts – in her right hand. Sally carried a chisel in the pocket of her coat and the axe in one hand. In the other she had a child’s windup torch – the sort that worked on a dynamo. She couldn’t stop her teeth chattering. Her bones felt like water – for anything she’d just stop here and curl up on the ground and pretend none of it was happening. But when you couldn’t bear the