Hanging Hill - Mo Hayder [16]
‘You’re not saying it was an accident she died?’ asked Ben.
The pathologist frowned. ‘What does that mean?’
‘It’s important – the guy could say he didn’t mean to kill her. That he was just trying to keep her quiet. I’m picturing defence briefs and manslaughter pleas is all.’
‘He could have removed the tape. Even when she was unconscious her breathing response would have kicked in automatically if he’d taken the tape off and shaken her. He could have saved her.’
Zoë stood in silence, gazing down at Lorne. Now that the tape had been removed her jaw hung open in a slack grin. Her tongue was a swollen grey piece of gristle lodged among the white enamel of teeth. Earlier, walking along the canal path, Zoë had been excited, motivated and full of energy. Not any more. She glanced up, found Ben watching her and turned away quickly, fishing out her phone and pretending to be looking at something important there. She didn’t want anyone to think she wasn’t holding it together. Particularly not Ben.
Peppercorn Cottage was so remote. So completely isolated. It was one of the things Sally loved about it – that she didn’t have any neighbours overlooking, no one to stare and judge her, no one to say, ‘Look there. Look how that Sally Cassidy’s gone to rack and ruin. Look how she’s letting the place fall in around her ears.’ A little stone-built place set down quite alone amid miles of practical, unfussy farmland less than a mile from Isabelle’s house. It had a rambling garden and a view that went on for ever and it was called Peppercorn because, years ago, it had attracted a peppercorn rent. It was the most higgledy-piggledy cottage Sally had ever seen: everything went in steps – the floors, the roof, even the bricks were askew. Not a straight line in sight. In the last year and a half she and Millie had crammed it full of the craft they did in their spare time. The kitchen was stacked with things – the eggcups glazed and studded with paste gems, the little portraits of the pets they’d owned over the years pinned crazily to the walls, the boiled-sweet Christmas stars still hanging in the windows like stained glass, filtering the sunlight in coloured topaz dots. So unlike the house in Sion Road that they’d lived in with Julian.
The living room was at the back, looking out over flat fields, not another building as far as the eye could see. That night Sally left the curtains open to the night and sat curled on the sofa with Steve, sipping wine and staring in disbelief at the TV. Lorne Wood’s death was on the national news and the top story on the local news.
‘I can’t believe it,’ Sally murmured, her lips on the rim of her glass. ‘Lorne. Look at her – she can’t be dead. She was so pretty.’
‘Nice-looking girl,’ Steve said. ‘It’ll get more coverage than if she wasn’t.’
‘All the boys were crazy about her. Crazy. And on the towpath of all places. Millie and I used to go there all the time.’
‘It’s still a towpath. You still can.’
Sally shivered. She ran her hands up and down the goosebumps on her arms and inched closer to Steve, trying to steal some of his body warmth. She and Steve had been together for four months now. On nights like tonight, when Millie was at Julian’s, Sally would go to Steve’s or he would come over to the cottage, bringing armfuls of treats, cases of wine and nice cheeses from the delis in the town centre. Tonight, though, she wished Millie was with them and not down at Sion Road. After a while, when she couldn’t relax, couldn’t stop the shivering, she swung her legs off the sofa, found her phone and dialled Millie’s mobile. It was answered