Hanging Hill - Mo Hayder [8]
‘DI Ben Parris.’ Ben offered his hand.
Amy shook it, eyeing him suspiciously. Then she took the cigarette out of her mouth and motioned for them to sit down. ‘No tea – generator died on me two weeks ago, and you really don’t want to see me doing my thing with the Primus stove.’
‘That’s OK. We won’t be long.’ Zoë pulled out her pocketbook. After all these years, with all the technology available, the force still liked everything noted in handwriting. Even so, she usually backed it up by recording everything on her iPhone. Technically she shouldn’t, not without asking permission, but she did it anyway. She’d developed a technique – a quick pass of the hand over her pocket, knew the keys without looking. Beep-beep with her fingers and she was recording, pretending with the notepad. ‘Our constable said you had something you wanted to talk about.’
‘Yes,’ said Amy. Her eyes were very intense, spiralled with broken veins. ‘I saw the body. Lots of us did.’
‘That was unfortunate,’ Ben said. ‘We do our utmost to preserve scenes. Sometimes we don’t manage it.’
‘Did you know,’ she said, ‘that you can see the soul leave the body? If you watch hard enough you’ll see it.’
Zoë lowered her face and pretended to write in her notepad. If Goodsy had brought them down here to hear about souls and spirits she’d kill him. ‘So – Amy. Did you see a soul? Leaving her body?’
She shook her head. ‘It had already gone. A long time ago.’
‘How long?’
‘When she died. Last night. They don’t hang around. It has to be the first half an hour.’
‘How do you know it was last night?’
‘Because of the bracelet.’
Ben raised an eyebrow. ‘The bracelet?’
‘She was wearing a bracelet. I saw it. When they found her body I saw the bracelet.’
Amy was right – Lorne had been wearing a bracelet. A dangly charm bracelet with a plated silver skull and miniature cutlery: a knife, fork and spoon. Also a lucky ‘16’, which she’d got for her birthday. It had been listed by her parents in the missing-persons report.
‘What about the bracelet? Why’s that important?’
‘Because I heard it. Last night.’ She took another deep drag, held it, then let it all out in a long, bluish stream. ‘You hear it all – sitting in here you hear every part of life. They all use the towpath, don’t they? You get the fights and the quarrels, the parties and the lovers. Mostly it’s just bike bells. Last night it was a girl with something dangling. Chink-chink, it went.’ She held up her finger and thumb, opened and closed them like a little beak. ‘Chink-chink.’
‘OK. And anything else?’
‘Apart from the chink-chink? Not much.’
‘Not much?’
‘No. Unless you count the conversation.’
‘The conversation?’ Ben said. ‘There was a conversation too?’
‘On the phone. You get used to knowing if it’s on the phone. At first, when I moved here, I used to think they were talking to a ghost – wandering along chit-chatting, no one answering. It took me ages to work it out. I don’t do technology – haven’t got a mobile phone and I won’t. Thank you very much.’ She gave a small, polite nod – as if Ben had offered her a free mobile and she’d been forced, graciously, to turn him down.
‘And you think it was Lorne?’
‘I’m sure it was.’
‘You didn’t see her?’
‘Just her feet. Wearing the same shoes as the ones that were next to her body. I saw those too, when they found her body. I take these things in.’
‘What time was this?’
‘A little before eight? It was quiet – the rush had finished. I’d say maybe seven thirty, seven forty-five?’
‘You sure?’
‘I’m sure.’
Zoë and Ben exchanged glances. When Lorne had gone missing, the OIC – the officer in charge of the missing-persons case – had got historical cell site analysis on her phone, which revealed she’d had one phone conversation yesterday evening, with her friend – a call that finished at seven forty-five. That must be what Amy had overheard. Which gave them an accurate time for when Lorne was on the path.
‘Amy,’ Ben said, ‘did