Hanging Hill - Mo Hayder [39]
‘That’s completely illegal. We’ll have to go to the police. We can drive there now.’
‘No. No, Mum. You can’t.’ Millie twisted around, stared over her shoulder at her mother. ‘You can’t go to the police – you just can’t. I’ll get expelled and everyone’ll find out – none of the parents’ll let me hang out with my friends. Dad’ll find out – Peter and Nial and Sophie’ll all find out. And he’ll hurt me next time. Really. If he finds out I went to the police I’ll be dead, Mum. Please – please. I’ll do anything. I’ll stop school and go to one of the state schools, then Dad can give the money he’s giving Kingsmead to me. I’ll do anything. Just please don’t go to the police – I can’t bear it if you tell anyone.’
‘How much do you owe him, Millie?’
Millie went quiet and still, as if she was crawling inside herself, rooting around to find a place where she was safe. ‘Four …’ she murmured after a while ‘… thousand. He kept adding interest, Mum, he kept making it more.’
Sally closed her eyes, rested her forehead against Millie’s hot back. She pictured Isabelle’s kitchen littered with expensive food and drink; she saw Melissa planting exotic shrubs in the garden at Sion Road; she saw David Goldrab swinging himself into his giant car. She saw all the mothers and fathers outside Kingsmead and knew that she was looking into a different world. That in the year and a half since she’d been divorced from Julian, she and Millie had slipped noiselessly and uncomplainingly over an invisible barrier into a place they’d never come back from. And it was all because of money.
18
For the first time since Zoë had known him, Ben’s appearance was less than perfect at that evening’s team meeting. Last night’s wine and lack of sleep were starting to show. He had the beginning of a five o’clock shadow on his jaw and his shirt was creased at the back. To her annoyance she found that creased shirt slightly endearing.
‘It’s all a bit disappointing,’ he said, addressing the assembled team. ‘I admit it hasn’t been a good day. First of all we’re still waiting for a single sighting. Unbelievable, I know, considering how usually a case with this much media will pop up scores of sightings all over the place. And Lorne, a striking girl, known to people, walking all that way home and not one person claiming they saw her. Nothing on any of the shops’ CCTV equipment, and none of the shop assistants remember anything either – though, according to her family, she did have a habit of browsing and not buying. So, nothing very encouraging on that.’
He rolled up his sleeves. It had been hot today. Hot enough to make those creases and so hot that summer seemed to have arrived already. Out in the streets almond blossom, blown in from the gardens and the parks, lay in drifts in the gutters. Zoë hadn’t said anything to Ben about the camera chip. She wasn’t sure how and when she’d do it. Whether she’d do it at all. The chip was still in her back pocket.
‘Our witness at the canal reported a conversation with Lorne that really didn’t tally with the conversation the OIC was told about when she went missing. So I spent an hour talking to Alice, the friend Lorne was on the phone to, and although she admitted Lorne was more upset than she’d originally said, she was evasive when I pushed her on why she was upset.’ He took a sip of coffee, set the cup down carefully. ‘So, let me just make an intuitive comment here. She was protecting someone.’
The superintendent, who had been at the back of the room, his arms folded, waiting to be impressed, now leaned forward. ‘Protecting someone?’
‘Yes. Alice was Lorne’s best friend, I mean real to-the-death friends, inseparable. And now she’s covering something up for her, even though she’s dead. Something important.’
Debbie Harry, who had been sitting in silence in the corner, got up and came to the front. She stood shoulder to shoulder with Ben and addressed the team, as if this was an investigation they were running together. ‘That’s right. You see, from this, and from other comments some of