Hanging Hill - Mo Hayder [30]
‘What do I want? I want to look at your muscle car.’ She put a hand on the bonnet. ‘It’s totally mint, Peg. Suits you.’
‘I’m in a hurry.’
‘I saw. Sitting there in the morning sun. Saw you were in a hurry.’
He scowled. ‘This is starting to piss me off.’
She looked across at the entrance to the school with its big ornate gates and the unmarked police cars. You wouldn’t know what they were unless you were police yourself. ‘What’re you doing outside the school? Why’d you pick here to sit?’
He gave her a tight, twitchy look. Then he smiled, showing the glint of a diamond set in his front tooth. ‘I’m a perv. Didn’t you know? Watching all the girls in their little short skirts?’ He rubbed his thighs. ‘Fuck, but they make me hot. Make me think about things my probation officer says I didn’t ought to think about.’
‘Yeah, yeah, yeah – still taking me for an idiot after all these years. You’re not a nonce, Peggers. You’re a lowlife piece of turd that one day, God willing, the good citizens of Bath will scrape off the bottom of their shoes for ever – but you’re not a nonce. So what is it? You dealing to the spoiled little girls and boys in there?’
‘I told you – I was resting. Closing my eyes.’
‘You heard about the murder? That’s the sort of thing that gets around.’
‘Course I heard.’
‘You know when it happened?’
‘Yes. The night before last.’
‘And you know where?’
‘Over there.’ He nodded in the direction of the canal. ‘They found her down there, didn’t they?’
‘And you didn’t see anything?’
‘Me? Me? Nothing. Never saw a thing.’
‘You sure? I mean, I could have a rummage around in that disgusting pimped-up heap of shit you’re driving, you sad bastard, and take you in. Now, are you sure?’
‘I’m sure.’ He tucked his hands into his armpits and fixed his eyes on her chin. ‘A hundred per cent.’
‘It’s just, you know, I’m a woman so I’ve got a memory like an elephant, can never wipe that slate clean. Know what I’m saying? And the thing I will never forget about you, Peggie, is you lying to the police. Every time you get your arse hauled in you tell lies. Now – tell me. Did you see anything?’
He blinked at her. A line of sweat had started on his lip. He lowered his head and kicked at the dirt a little. ‘Dunno. I might’ve done. Might’ve seen her with one of the boys. Walking down there, near the canal.’
‘One of the boys? What do you mean, “one of the boys”?’
‘Schoolkid. They went into that wood over there.’
For a moment Zoë genuinely didn’t know what to say. She stared at the top of his head, gleaming and gelled, thinking that Debbie Harry would have loved to hear that come out of his mouth. To confirm her theory. But then Jake shifted and kicked the dirt some more and twitched and avoided her eyes, and suddenly she got it. He hadn’t seen Lorne with anyone – he hadn’t seen a thing. He’d been sitting out here all day, dealing to the pupils of Faulkener’s, and probably some of them had already told him that the police were questioning all the boys. He wanted her off his case, so he was just parroting back what he thought she wanted to hear.
She sighed. Swung her keys round on her index finger. Another unmarked car had just pulled into the driveway of the school. Swimming against the tide.
‘Pleasant though it always is to pass the time of day with you, Peggie,’ she said nicely, ‘I’ll let you get back to work now. I mean, you’re going to need the money, what with those rear indicators being illegal and the fines I’m going to slap on you if I see you hanging around here again.’
15
The Woods’ house was set in gardens that rambled for almost an acre up from the canal towpath. The narrow driveway led through an imposing grove of redwood trees, with well-tended lawns stretching away on either side, then clusters of outbuildings and greenhouses. A ride-on mower sat in the sun and a wheelbarrow full of dead bindweed had been abandoned on the hard-standing. The house itself was comparatively small and unprepossessing – a thirties pebble-dashed box, neat and well maintained but unimaginative. A uPVC conservatory had been