Hanging Hill - Mo Hayder [156]
She poked her head round the door, quite cool and unhurried now. There was no need for a torch – the moon from the window opposite lit up the room, wet and filthy. It was full of old furniture: a sideboard and a sofa that someone had tried to set fire to, a broken standard lamp leaning crookedly up against the wall. Scrappy blackened curtains hung at the window, which looked out at the cliff behind and, on the other side of the cracked glass, lit eerily by the moon, a man’s dark, oval face. Kelvin. Banging his head monotonously into the glass, raw intent in his face. She didn’t bolt back, just stood rooted in the doorway, staring at him. He wasn’t looking at her. He hadn’t even registered her presence, his eyes were so shuttered and blank in his brute need to get into the house.
He was smaller than she’d expected. He must be kneeling there, so close to the window, his hands out of sight below the sill. Whatever she’d imagined in his face – cunning or malice – it wasn’t there. It was dull. Flaccid. She made up her mind right there and then. She was going to kill him. She’d done it to David Goldrab, but this was going to be easier. Much easier.
‘What’s wrong with him?’ Zoë had crept up behind her and was looking over her shoulder. ‘He looks weird. Is he drunk?’
‘Yes,’ she murmured. ‘It’s good. He’s useless.’ She put the dragon lamp on the floor and raised the axe. There was bile in her mouth. This was it, then. This was the moment. ‘Don’t look.’
‘Wait.’ Zoë grabbed her arm. ‘Hang on. Something’s wrong.’
Sally lowered the axe and Zoë hefted up the dragon lamp from the floor. It powered blindingly across the tiny room, illuminating the sofa and the sideboard and the tatty curtains, putting Kelvin’s face into sharp relief against the rock. He didn’t react to the light. Not at all. He remained in the same position, his lolling head banging rhythmically into the frame. There was a mark on his forehead where it was making contact, but no blood. And the banging was lackadaisical. More of a spasm than an intention.
‘Why’s he so low down?’
Sally shook her head, transfixed by his face. ‘Isn’t he kneeling?’
‘No. It’s something else.’
Together the two women took a step into the room. Zoë shook the torch, moved it randomly to create a strobe effect. Then she took another step forward and shone it straight into his eyes. Still he didn’t react. His eyes stared forward, black and blank, as if focused on something in the window-frame.
Sally let out all her breath, walked to the window and put the axe straight through the glass. Kelvin’s body swayed a little, but he didn’t look up at her. His head jerked forward and made contact with the frame again, just inches from her face, then snapped back. She saw his eyes under the lowered lids. Saw the blackness. Saw the scar in his skull that snaked down from his ear into the collar of his checked shirt. His face was pulled back in a grimace. There was some blood on the front of his shirt, as if maybe it had come from his mouth.
‘He’s dead,’ she said. ‘Dead.’
She leaned out of the broken window, angled the torch down, and saw he wasn’t kneeling at all. It was just that he had no legs. What had once been his lower body had concertinaed here. Into a bag of broken limbs half held together by his jeans. A tree branch growing out of the rock had caught him – suspended him there like a puppet, moving him back and forward into the window. Slowly, she raised the torch to the rockface. Saw a tree hanging half out of the rock, pale yellow earth spilling down. A long scar as if someone had tumbled down. She saw it all now – Kelvin and Nial struggling. A long, scrambling fall.
She pulled back from the window, and picked her way back across the litter of beer cans into the hallway. She dropped to a crouch next to Nial, where the ground was tacky with blood. She put her hand on his side, feeling it rapidly rise and fall under her fingers. His