Hanging Hill - Mo Hayder [64]
‘Come on,’ she said, leaning forward, ‘let’s take a deep breath, shall we?’ Technically she should be thinking about calling in the child-protection units, with a minor saying things about wanting to die, but she’d never get the story out of him if she did that. ‘OK? You OK?’
After a moment or two he licked his lips and muttered, ‘Yeah.’
‘And calmly now, Ralph, just calmly, knowing how awful you feel about all of this, and knowing how much you want to help us catch whoever did this to Lorne, take me through what happened that night.’
The room fell quiet. All the other teenagers had their attention on him. He lowered his eyes to his hands, which he held in tight fists. ‘She told her mum she was shopping, but actually she was meeting me. Up near Beckford’s Tower. Where we always met.’
Beckford’s. The great Victorian monument that drunken farmers were supposed to have used to find their way home at night, with its neoclassical belvedere, its gilded lantern. It stood in a cemetery at the top of Lansdown and could be seen from all across the city. It was also on one of the bus routes that came through the stop near the canal. Zoë sighed. Lorne must have been on the bus because she’d been up at Beckford’s with Ralph. ‘So, what time was that?’
‘About five thirty, I think.’
‘How long were you there?’
‘I’m really not sure. It could have been an hour. It could have been an hour and a half.’
‘You don’t know?’
‘I didn’t check my watch. I just didn’t. Otherwise I’d tell you.’
So, up to ninety minutes maximum. Add to that the ten minutes or so bus ride to the centre of town and there was still the outside chance Lorne had gone somewhere after leaving Ralph – before going to the canal.
‘And then?’
‘And then she left. And I walked into town. I met up with, uh –’ he rubbed his arms again ‘– with Peter and Nial.’
‘We went out for a beer,’ Nial said hurriedly. ‘The school had won a cricket match the day before so we felt like having a little celebrate.’
‘The three of you?’
‘That’s right.’
‘Are you old enough to be cruising round the local pubs?’
‘Well – no. Not really. We kind of used fake IDs.’
‘Kind of?’
‘Yes. Why? Are you going to give us a lecture on it?’
Zoë raised her eyebrows at him. Impressed by his guts. ‘No,’ she said. ‘Of course I’m not. In the scheme of things it’s not exactly the crime of the century. So what time did your little fake-ID celebration finish?’
Nial shot Peter a look. Peter scratched his head. ‘What time was it? About midnight?’
‘About that, yeah.’
‘Where did you go, Ralph?’
‘Home. Weston.’
‘How did you get there?’
‘I walked.’
‘Did anything unusual happen on the way? Did you see anyone you knew?’
‘No.’
‘So let’s backtrack a bit. You met Lorne. What happened while you were together?’
There was a silence. Ralph’s head was quite still but his hands weren’t. They made little trembling movements. His shoulders were shaking. He shook his head imploringly – as if he couldn’t trust himself to speak without crying.
Zoë met Peter’s eyes. She jerked a thumb at the door. ‘Give us a few moments here?’ she mouthed. ‘Some privacy.’
The other two boys and the two girls exchanged glances. Then, as if they were a single organism, capable of reaching decisions without words, they filed out. In the corridor they stood with their hands in their pockets, each with one foot up against the wall. Like the cover of a Ramones album. It never went out of style to be skinny and sullen.
Zoë kicked the door closed, grabbed a handful of tissues from the box on the window-sill and turned back to Ralph. He had slid down the wall and was in a little huddled squat, his hands over his face. ‘OK, OK.’ She crouched next to him, put a hand on his shoulder and felt the warmth of his skin through the thin shirt. The tremor of his breath coming in and out. ‘Look, you’ve done the right thing by coming to me.’ She handed him a tissue. He took it and crammed it against his face. ‘You can be proud of that.’
He