Hanging Hill - Mo Hayder [58]
But in the dream Zoë didn’t feel rage. Instead she felt fear. Real terror. Something about the snow and the nursery and the numbers on the wall was crowding at her, trying to close in on her. And behind her a child was screaming. She turned and saw it was Sally, her face a mask of terror, something red leaking from her hand. With the other hand she was pointing anxiously at the numbers on the wall, as if it was of vital importance that Zoë saw them. ‘Look,’ she was screaming. ‘Look at the numbers. Number one, number two, number three.’
Zoë looked again at the number chart and saw it had changed. Now it wasn’t numbers written out for children to learn: it was the sign at the Zebedee Juice Agency, No. 1 Milsom Street.
No. 1 … No. 1.
She sat up quickly, gulping air, her heart racing. It took her a moment to realize where she was – in her bed at home.
It was light outside and sunlight dappled the ceiling. No. 1. Number one. Now she got it. It had niggled at her when she was at Zebedee Juice and now she understood why. It was what the killer had written on Lorne’s stomach. She snatched up her phone. The display read ten to eight. She’d been asleep for seven hours. There was a team meeting in forty minutes. But this time it wasn’t going to be Debbie Harry speaking at the front of the room. It was going to be Zoë.
She raced through the shower, guzzled two cups of coffee, let the cat out, shooing it when it tried to nuzzle her ankle, and got to work at exactly half past to find the meeting had already started. Someone had blown up a series of photos – all registered sex offenders under the age of twenty-five who lived in the area – and had pinned them to the wall. One of the DSs was talking the team through the history of each one. When Zoë came in, flushed, hair still wet from the shower, clutching her bike helmet, the DS stopped talking and stared at her dumbly.
‘Sorry, mate,’ She dumped the helmet and her keys on a chair and came to the front of the room. ‘I’ve got to say something. Just before you go any further.’ She uncapped a marker pen and drew a circle on the whiteboard. ‘We’re looking at it all wrong.’
In the circle she carefully wrote: No. One.
Then she moved one of Lorne’s post-mortem pictures – the one with the message on her stomach – and stuck it on the board next to the words. ‘Look at the picture,’ she said. ‘Look at her belly button. Right here, after the “No”.’
The team gawped at the whiteboard, not a flicker of recognition in their faces.
‘It doesn’t mean no one understands him. It doesn’t mean that Lorne is no one to him. He’s telling us she is number one. Just one of many. He means there are going to be more. A number two. A number three.’
There was a long, stunned silence. Then, at the edge of the room, the superintendent cleared his throat. ‘Great – thanks, Zoë. Everyone – take that on board, OK? You hear me? Now.’ He nodded at the DS. ‘Have you finished, mate? Because I want to get on to this thing with British Waterways. I want a complete list of anyone who was mooring in the canal on Saturday so we can—’
‘Hang on, hang on.’ Zoë held up her hand. ‘I’m still here, you know. I haven’t left the room.’
‘I’m sorry?’
‘I’m still here. Or are you going to ignore what I just said?’
‘I haven’t ignored it. I’ve told everyone to keep it in mind.’
‘Would you like me to finish what I was going to say? Or shall I not bother?’
The superintendent looked at her, a baleful light in his eyes. But he knew Zoë of old, knew sometimes it was easier to roll over, and eventually he took a step back, holding his hands up in surrender.
‘OK.’ She turned back to the team. She knew the blood had come to her face and that Ben was watching her steadily from the corner. ‘We’ve got to take this seriously, because – who knows? – I might even be right. He could intend doing this again. It could already have happened. Has anyone gone to Intelligence to find out if there’re any other forces dealing with anything like this?’
‘We’d know if there were,’ said the superintendent.
‘Would we?