Hanging Hill - Mo Hayder [95]
The utility-room door stood open, as it often did. They walked in, putting down their cleaning kits. The place was exactly as Sally had left it. Maybe cobwebs were already forming, growing on the ornate wall lamps, maybe dust was settling on the surfaces, the computers and huge TVs, but it all looked exactly the way it had been. The champagne glasses were still on the table where David and Jake had sat drinking.
‘No list,’ Danuta said, lifting a couple of newspapers and checking under them. ‘Bloody fat man, you didn’t leave a list.’
‘Dum-de-dum-de-dah,’ Marysieńka hummed. She went to the doorway and shouted into the hall, ‘Mr Goldrab?’
Silence.
‘Mr Goldrab?’ She wandered to the bottom of the stairs, pulling on her rubber gloves, looking up to the landing. ‘You there?’ She waited a moment. When there was no answer she wandered back into the kitchen, shrugging. ‘Not here.’
She flicked on the coffee-maker, opened the fridge, got out some milk and filled the frother while Danuta rummaged for mugs. Sally put her kit down and made a play of pulling things out, getting ready for a job that wasn’t going to happen. She was concentrating so hard on making it look natural that it took her a moment to realize the girls had gone quiet. They had stopped what they were doing and were standing, hands frozen on milk bottles and coffee cups, their faces turned to the door.
When she turned she saw why. A woman was standing in the doorway. Very tall, dressed in jeans, her red hair loose across her shoulders, a police card thrust out at arm’s length. Sally stared at her, her heart doing a low, disorienting swoop in her chest.
There was a moment’s silence. Then the woman lowered the card with a frown. ‘Sally?’ she said. ‘Sally?’
9
‘Sally Cassidy.’ Zoë wrote the name. She’d interviewed both the Polish girls already and let them go. Now she and Sally were in her office, the door closed. ‘I’m using your married name.’
‘I’m not married any more.’
‘No.’ Zoë raised her head and studied her. Sally sat on the other side of the desk, her hands in her lap. She had her hair tied back, no makeup on, and she was wearing a little pink tabard with ‘HomeMaids’ emblazoned on it. In front of her was a Lucozade bottle one of the Polish girls had given her for the shock because she was taking it badly, Goldrab going missing. Her face was pale under the freckles, and her lips had a bluish tinge. ‘But I’ll still use it. Because I shouldn’t be interviewing you, you being my sister.’
‘OK. I understand.’
Zoë put a line under the name. Then another. This was weird. So weird. ‘Sally,’ she said, ‘how long has it been now?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Years. Must be.’
‘Must be.’
‘Yes. Well.’ She tapped her pen on the desk. ‘We don’t have to take all day about this. I’ll ask you the same questions I asked Danuta and Marysieńka. Then you can go.’
‘My answers won’t be the same.’
‘Why not?’
‘Because I’ve been working for David privately. We had an arrangement.’
‘An arrangement?’
‘I didn’t tell the girls and I didn’t tell the agency, but yes. I worked for him and he was paying me direct.’
‘The girls said he cut their hours recently – changed their day?’
‘Yes, because I’d started working for him.’ Sally linked her hands on the table. ‘He didn’t need them.’
Zoë’s eyes went to the hands, to the little finger on the right, which was crooked. You had to know it was there – it was just the faintest deviation in the joint, making the finger turn in on itself. She dragged her eyes away, concentrated on her notes. It would be so easy to go back to that hand, back to the accident and the moment her life had changed. She tapped her biro harder on the desk. One, two, three. Snapped herself