Hanging Hill - Mo Hayder [65]
‘But I need to get it all clear in my thoughts, Ralph. I asked you if something particular happened at Beckford’s Tower and that seemed to upset you.’
He nodded miserably. ‘We had an argument. She wanted to tell everyone about us and I …’ He had to take deep breaths to calm himself. ‘We split up. We split up and she said she never wanted to see me again and … And … And that’s what happened. And it’s all my fucking fault. All because I’m scared of my fucking parents.’
‘It’s not your fault, Ralph. It’s really not your fault.’
‘What’s going to happen? Do I have to go to court? Are my parents going to know about it? My father’ll be furious. He thinks lying should be counted as a mortal sin.’
She rested her arm on his shoulders. He really was just a little boy. She could see the faint white of his scalp at the neat parting of his black hair. ‘I think, Ralph, that most parents would be more concerned about your welfare. And that you’ve had the courage to tell the truth.’
‘Christ.’ He’d used up the tissues so he wiped his nose on the shoulder of his shirt. ‘I wish you were my mother.’
‘Oh, no, no. I’d be a terrible mother. You can trust me on that one. Now, coming here was a huge decision for you, but it was the right one. This information is really, really important. With it we can build a picture of what happened to Lorne. But there’s not a lot I can do with the information if I can’t share it with my colleagues. If I gave you a guarantee that nothing will be said to your parents until you’re happy for them to hear, would you come and tell the rest of the team? The ones who can make a difference? You could stop this happening again. To someone else.’
There was a silence. It took her a moment to realize he was nodding.
31
The Police and Criminal Evidence Act of 1984 had dictated that all interviews of suspects had to take place in a specially designated room – well lit, well ventilated, soundproofed, with embedded recording facilities and access to a neutral ‘break-out’ space should the interviewee decide he or she didn’t like the way the interview was going. Councils around the country had had to dig deep to install PACE rooms – and at Bath police station there were two.
Zoë sat at her desk with the door open so she could monitor the passageway. Her office was at the place where the corridor branched off to lead to the interview rooms. If Ralph was moved from the side office near the incident room where Ben was speaking to him, it meant they had gone against every one of her instincts, every one of her requests, and were interviewing him as a possible suspect in the murder. But the station was silent for a long time. Hours. God only knew what they were doing with him.
She tried to concentrate on other tasks. She set up an intelligence request for missing women aged between sixteen and twenty-one. When she’d told Debbie that ‘all like her’ meant the killer was going to target girls like Lorne, she’d plucked it out of the air. But what if she hadn’t been so far off the mark? It was worth thinking about. Except that, looking at the screen, it wasn’t going to be easy – the result of the search was terrifying. Name after name after name. Of course she knew most of the girls on the list were probably alive and well and had simply lost contact with their families, or were avoiding them. A good proportion would have returned and the police not been notified. Even so there were hundreds and hundreds and hundreds. One person couldn’t work through all of those on their own. She sat back in her chair and folded her arms. Shit. If one of those names had belonged to a victim of Lorne’s killer and their body hadn’t been found, there was no earthly chance the police would pick up on it.
At a quarter to ten Ben walked past, going fast, carrying a stack of files. He didn’t pay her any attention, but went into his office. She heard the door slam. She waited for a moment or two, then got up, went along the corridor and knocked on the door.
‘Who is it?’
‘Me. Zoë.