Hanging Hill - Mo Hayder [19]
Zoë glanced down at his chest and clamped her hand over her mouth. ‘Good God.’
‘And more down here too. Hang on.’ He was tugging at his zip. ‘I’ll show you.’
And that had been Zoë and Ben spoken for, stuck into a twenty-four-hour mission for Ben to prove to her how ungay he was. She’d emerged from it screaming and giggling and doing a naked jig at the open window, like a rain dance, singing a victorious whoop-whoop-whoop out across the city. That had been five months ago and they were still sleeping together. He wasn’t intimidated by her height, or her messy thatch of red hair, or her never-ending legs, which should have been in a kick-boxing movie. He didn’t care about her drinking and her tempers or the fact she couldn’t cook. He was addicted to her.
Or, rather, he had been. But lately, she thought, something was different. Recently a serious note had crept into the equation. That resilient, good-humoured man, the one who’d come back at Zoë in a blink, had transformed into someone quieter. It wasn’t a change she could put her finger on, just something about the length of silences between sentences. The way his eyes sometimes strayed in the middle of conversations.
Now, while Zoë pulled another bottle from the rack and shoved in the corkscrew, Ben went to the little pantry to get a bag of crisps. He stood for a while, considering what was on the shelves. ‘You’ve got stacks and stacks of food in here.’
She didn’t glance up. ‘Yeah – in case I get ill and can’t go out.’
‘You couldn’t just ask someone to go out and shop for you?’
Zoë stopped struggling with the corkscrew and raised her eyes to him. Just ask someone? Who the hell was she supposed to ask? Her parents weren’t here – she spoke to them sometimes on the phone, visited them in Spain every now and then, when she felt she ought to, but they were thousands of miles away and, honestly, things had always been strained with them. She hadn’t seen Sally in eighteen years – at least, not properly to speak to, just briefly in the street – and that was all the family she had locally. As for friends, well, they were all cops and bikers. Not exactly born nursemaids, any of them.
‘I mean, you’d do it for someone if they needed it, wouldn’t you?’
‘That’s not the point.’
‘What is the point, then?’
She went back to opening the cork. ‘Being prepared for the unexpected. Didn’t they do a module on that in training? I’m sure I remember it.’ She topped up her glass and set it to one side. Then she reached into her bike satchel and pulled out the file on Lorne. She spread the photos of the post-mortem on the table. Ben emptied the crisps into a bowl, brought it over to the table and looked down at the images.
‘“All like her”?’ Zoë used her forefinger to trace the words on Lorne’s leg. ‘What does that mean?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘There are letters missing. Before and after. They’re smudged.’
‘That’s just part of the message. I guess it’s up to us to fill in the rest. If it’s important.’
She picked up the photo of Lorne’s abdomen. The words ‘no one’. ‘What the hell?’ she murmured. ‘I mean, really – he’s nuts, isn’t he? What’s he talking about – “no one”?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘That she’s no one to him? That she’s nothing. Dispensable? Or that no one understands him?’
Ben sat down. ‘God knows. Bloody nightmare, isn’t it? And I keep going back to what she said outside the barge: “I’ve had enough.” I spoke to the OIC when she was missing, and there was nothing unusual about the chat she was having, according to her mate at the other end of the line.’
‘Alice.’
‘Alice. So when Lorne said, “I’ve had enough,” what was she talking about? And why didn’t Alice say anything about it?’ He gazed wearily into his drink, sloshed it from side to side. ‘Someone’s going to have to speak to her parents in the morning.’
‘The family liaison’s with them overnight.’
‘I don’t even want to think what they’re going through.’
‘Exactly. Another good reason not to have children. Someone should have read them the warnings on the pack before they got into the procreation thing.’
Ben stopped