Hanging Hill - Mo Hayder [48]
With another uncertain look at David, Millie set off down the path. He folded his arms and watched her go. She was very thin in her jeans, which were big in the leg but tight on the hips, and her hair bounced and gleamed in the sunlight. Sally watched the way he was eyeing her daughter. She slammed the car door, louder than she needed to, and he turned to her with a lazy smile.
‘What? Oh, Sally, I’m disappointed. You think I’m checking her out, don’t you? What do you take me for?’ He looked back at Millie, who was just disappearing behind the flower borders. ‘Do you think I’m some kind of pervert? A man of my age? A girl of that age? She’s far, far too old for me.’
Sally stiffened and he roared with laughter, nudging her arm. ‘I’m joking, girl. Joking. It was just a leetle joke. Go on – crack a fucking smile, can’t you? Christ.’ He sighed. ‘Did you have to pay extra for that stick you’ve got up your arse or did it come free with the convent education?’
Sally swallowed. Her mouth was dry. But she didn’t let it show. She went to the car boot and began to get out her cleaning equipment.
‘I’m only pulling your leg, girl.’
She took out the black attaché case she kept her notepads and pencils in and, without waiting, set off up the path, followed by David, who huffed and puffed and muttered darkly about people with no sense of humour. Inside the house was filled with the smell of bread. He must have been cooking, using the three hundred pounds’ worth of automatic bread-maker that sat next to the coffee machine in the kitchen. Sally sucked at the air, pulling it down into her lungs, willing it to calm her. The smell of food always made her nerves go away.
‘Know what, Sally?’ David said, when they got to the office. ‘Don’t take this the wrong way, but I have the feeling Sally Benedict doesn’t hold David Goldrab in very high esteem. Because that’s the way the world works, ain’t it? Now, you probably grew up in some place with turrets and stables. Me? Well, there were towers and drawbridges in my past too – a tower block with a fucking great iron security door to stop the junkies off the Isle of Dogs breaking in and shitting in the lift. Which never worked anyway, whether it got used as a toilet or not. Seventeenth floor and no hot water, no heating.’
He sat on his swivel chair, unstrapped the heart monitor, plugged it into the back of a white Sony laptop and began downloading his day’s workout readings. Then he used his heels to kick himself across the room to a larger desktop computer and switched it on.
‘1957 – that was when I was really born, not 1983, in case I had you fooled there. Youngest of three boys – it was two to a bed in those days, a mattress on the floor, and count yourself lucky if you got one scabby little square inch of peeling wallpaper to stick your posters on. Always getting your dick groped – had to sleep like this.’ He put his hands over his crotch and bent at the waist as if he’d just taken a cricket ball in the groin. ‘Oldest brother turned into a drunk at thirteen. Mum never even noticed, she was that taken up with herself and her own bloody misery. He’d come home shit-faced and crash on top of us. Can still smell him, the miserable cunt. One morning I wake up and the bed’s wet. He’s wet the fucking bed, and the moment I sit up in bed, see him lying there all covered in puke and blood and his own piss but still breathing, still snoring, I know for sure that if it takes every inch of my energy, every drop of my sweat, if I have to eat shit, kill for it, I’m going to get out of there – find my own space. My Lebensraum.’
He opened his hands to indicate the grounds outside the window. From there the hills rolled away. There was hardly anything, just a few telegraph poles in the far distance, to indicate that there were any other human beings on the planet. The gate Millie had gone through was surrounded by trees throwing giant shadows on to the grass below. She was nowhere to be seen.
‘Lebensraum,’ he repeated. ‘What Hitler wanted. Sometimes, you know, you have