Hanging Hill - Mo Hayder [91]
She clicked on Marc Rainer first. He was pictured leaving a café on a nondescript street with two black guys who wore tight trousers and Afro hair, as if they wanted to be in a blaxploitation movie. Rainer was thick-set and wearing a mustard turtle-neck under a brown leather jacket. He wasn’t London Tarn. The second was a custody photograph. Richard Rose. An English name, but his heritage was from somewhere in the Levant: Turkey maybe, or Cyprus. She clicked on the third. And sat, hardly breathing, looking into his eyes.
London Tarn. Unmistakably, London Tarn. Years and years had passed but she’d have known him anywhere.
His name was David Goldrab.
5
‘Have you ever heard of David Goldrab?’ The uniformed inspector looked up from the overtime sheets he was signing off. Zoë stood in the doorway, her arms folded. ‘David Goldrab. Apparently he’s got connections on our patch.’
The inspector put down his pen and looked at her levelly. ‘Ye-es,’ he said cautiously. ‘Why?’
‘Oh, nothing. Just his name came up. I’m having a little look at him.’ She broke off. The inspector’s face was twisting unhappily. ‘What is it?’ she asked. ‘What’ve I said?’
‘Nothing. It’s just that …’ He glanced at the telephone. ‘David Goldrab?’
‘That’s the one.’
‘I put down the phone to his brother about an hour ago. Nice piece of work – calling from London. Called me a “fucking woolly” and a few other things. Made a few allegations about my feelings towards sheep.’
‘His brother?’
‘Yup. Goldrab’s not been heard from for nearly four days. He lives up near Hanging Hill, and usually he speaks to his mother in London every day, morning and night. But he hasn’t answered his calls and now she’s having epis right, left and centre, the brother’s going ballistic and apparently we’re supposed to get every officer in Avon and Somerset Constabulary out hunting for this jerk. So he’s got form, has he? I didn’t know.’
‘He hasn’t,’ Zoë said distantly. She was thinking about Hanging Hill. North of the city. It faced north, looking out towards the Caterpillar. It was a weird place, damp and a little lonely. There was a bus stop there, on the same route that took in Beckford’s Tower – where Ralph claimed to have met Lorne on the night of her death – and continued to the bus stop at the canal. ‘Or, rather, he should have form but he flew under the radar. Clever man. Have you actioned anything yet?’
‘Someone in Intelligence is going to look at his phone later, and his bank account – but he’s not exactly vulnerable. One of the cars’ll swing by and do a welfare check.’
‘Have they left?’
He stood up and craned his neck to look out of the window at the car park. ‘Nope. They’re taking the GP car. It’s still there.’
‘OK. Call down. Tell them not to bother. I’ve got to drive through Hanging Hill in about twenty minutes. I’ll save them the hassle.’
‘You’re not getting all helpful on us, are you?’
‘Helpful? Christ, no.’ She patted her pockets, looking for her keys. ‘Like I said, I just happen to be going that way.’
6
The West Country got the first of the weather from the Atlantic. It got the first of the winds and the first of the Gulf Stream. Its job was to tame the systems for the rest of the country, to filter them out before they passed over to the powerful cities in the east. But the west had got used to waiting until last for the sun. Dawn took its time over Russia, over the Continent, creeping across France and over the ferries and small boats of the Channel, moving inland over London with its glass towers and steel buildings grazing the underside of the sky. By the time daylight found Bath it was weary of the land and anxious for the blue of the Atlantic. Evenings in Peppercorn Cottage were like fiestas, flame-coloured and long, but mornings seemed