Part 33 (2/2)

Zoe fished out the phone and dialled the number again. This time the noise was much louder. There wasn't any question where it was coming from. The other side of the silage. The quarry where Pollock's house was.

46.

The moon broke free from its cloud cover as they crossed the farm and for a moment it was so bright they seemed to be under a giant spotlight. Two lonely figures casting long blue shadows where they walked, feet shus.h.i.+ng the dead corn. They came through the gate at the top of the quarry and slowly, using their hands to steady themselves against the trees, joined the zigzag path, which meandered through thick trees down the cliff edge. At the foot of the path they paused. The valley floor stretched away, serene and motionless. To their right was the house. It was in darkness, but the moonlight picked out its shape and reflected off the broken windows in the top floor.

Zoe dialled Nial again. There was a pause, then it clicked through. This time the noise was so close it made them both jump. It was coming from the house, floating out across the frigid air like a plea. It rang five, six times, and went into answerphone.

'Come on,' she mouthed. 'Come on.'

They went, single file, heads lowered. The house stood with its back just a few yards from the quarry wall as if it had fallen from the top and landed there, miraculously upright. It was rendered and roofed, but since Zoe was last here it had been used by the meths addicts and now it had the feel of something built by the army as a training range, with its doorways stripped to the brick, a great pool of weed-pocked rainwater on the cracked concrete it stood on. Everything had been covered with graffiti even the quarry wall behind it. There were a few grilles on the windows, but most had been wrenched off and scattered on the ground to rot.

The women got to the side of the house, and squatted, their backs to the filthy wall, while Zoe dialled the number again. They held their breath, listening. The ringing was coming from inside the house, at ground level, somewhere near the back. Zoe cut the call and pushed the phone into her pocket. She held her breath and listened again. This time she heard something else, coming from the same place inside the house. The noise, the rhythmic noise they'd heard on the phone. Like something soft being banged against gla.s.s.

She wiped her forehead. 'Christ. Christ.'

'Hey,' Sally whispered suddenly. 'We've got to keep going.'

Zoe shot her a look. Sally's eyes were clear, and her face was remarkably composed. Zoe got some strength from her expression. She took a moment, then nodded. She picked up the hammer and torch. 'Come on.'

Together they moved along the edge of the house, stopping at the corner, just ten inches from the front door. Zoe leaned her head back against the wall, took a few deep breaths, then swivelled, put her head into the doorway. She jerked back.

'Anything?'

She shook her head. 'But I can't see properly,' she murmured. 'It's too dark. I've got to use this.' She licked her lips, looked down and flicked the ready switch on the dragon light. 'It'll blind anyone in there. But only for about twenty seconds. Then they're going to know we're here. Are you ready for that?'

Sally pressed her eyelids down with her fingers. She was paler than a ghost, but she nodded. 'Yes. If you are.'

They turned into the entrance, Zoe holding up the light, s.h.i.+ning it into the house, and the two women stared in, taking a mental snapshot of what lay in front of them. The hallway ran from the front door to the back, with two doors opening from it on the left. The place was completely stripped; only some parts of the wall still had chunks of plaster. There were the remains of a carpet in the hallway, but it had become so rotten and wet it looked more like mud and was dotted with puddles. This must have been the site of many a party empty bottles and beer cans littered the place and something big lay next to the back door. At first Zoe took it for a bundled-up carpet, or clothes, half covered with leaves, but then she saw it was a human being. His s.h.i.+rt was half lifted from his back to reveal long grazes that had leaked blood into the seat of his jeans.

She switched off the light and quickly flattened herself against the wall. Sally did the same and they stood there, breathing hard, closing their eyes and going back over what they'd seen.

'It's him,' Sally whispered. 'Nial.'

'Yes.'

He'd been lying on his side, his back to them so they couldn't see his face, but it was definitely him. Those injuries on his back could only have come from falling down the slope. Maybe with the last of his strength he'd crawled into the house through the back door. She switched the light on again, twisted back into the doorway and shone the torch on the two doorways to check Kelvin wasn't standing there. Then she moved the beam to the body at the end of the hall and saw it move slightly.

'Nial?' She cupped her hand around her mouth and hissed down the hallway. 'Nial? You OK? Where's Millie?'

Nial's hand lifted. Seemed to be trying to wave at them. It could have been a wave of acknowledgement, it could have been a warning, or it could have been him trying to direct them to Millie. It stayed in the air for a second or two, then collapsed. His leg twitched, he tried to roll sideways to face them, but the effort was too much. He gave up and just lay there, breathing slowly, his thin ribs rising and falling.

Thud. Thud. Thud, came the noise, from the second doorway. Thud. Thud. Thud Thud. Thud. Thud.

Two lines of sweat broke from under Zoe's hair. It was the room where old man Pollock had been found.

Thud. Thud. Thud.

She nearly lost it then. She shrank out of sight and stood with her back to the wall, panting, wanting to run away. She put her hands up to her face and tried to calm her breathing. Slowly. In and out. In and out. She'd held it together this long. She could do this. She could.

'Zoe?'

A cool hand on her shoulder. She looked sideways. Sally was standing close to her. Her face calm, smooth. She reached down and gently prised the big torch from her sister's stiff fingers.

'It's OK.' She held Zoe's eyes. 'Really it's OK. I'm OK. Not scared. Not at all.'

47.

As she'd walked across the fields, come down the quarry edge and approached the house, something had happened to Sally. The thing that had been coming up inside her for weeks at last reached the surface. It was the thing that had been able to say no to Steve when he'd offered her money, to say no when he'd said he was coming home from Seattle. The thing that had been able to keep filming Jake that night in Twerton, and had been able to cut David Goldrab into a million pieces. The thing was skinless and sharp-toothed, with the long face of a dragon, and had just shaken itself free of the old Sally, leaving her perfectly calm, perfectly focused. She was going to go in and get Millie out. Simple as that.

She examined the torch, flicked the switch back and forward, checking it carefully. Then she lifted the axe in the other hand, holding it over her shoulder like a woodcutter. Her face fixed, her heart beating slowly, she stepped into the hallway and crunched along the gla.s.s in the hall to the doorway where the noise was coming from.

She poked her head round the door, quite cool and unhurried now. There was no need for a torch the moon from the window opposite lit up the room, wet and filthy. It was full of old furniture: a sideboard and a sofa that someone had tried to set fire to, a broken standard lamp leaning crookedly up against the wall. Sc.r.a.ppy blackened curtains hung at the window, which looked out at the cliff behind and, on the other side of the cracked gla.s.s, lit eerily by the moon, a man's dark, oval face. Kelvin. Banging his head monotonously into the gla.s.s, raw intent in his face. She didn't bolt back, just stood rooted in the doorway, staring at him. He wasn't looking at her. He hadn't even registered her presence, his eyes were so shuttered and blank in his brute need to get into the house.

He was smaller than she'd expected. He must be kneeling there, so close to the window, his hands out of sight below the sill. Whatever she'd imagined in his face cunning or malice it wasn't there. It was dull. Flaccid. She made up her mind right there and then. She was going to kill him. She'd done it to David Goldrab, but this was going to be easier. Much easier.

'What's wrong with him?' Zoe had crept up behind her and was looking over her shoulder. 'He looks weird. Is he drunk?'

'Yes,' she murmured. 'It's good. He's useless.' She put the dragon lamp on the floor and raised the axe. There was bile in her mouth. This was it, then. This was the moment. 'Don't look.'

'Wait.' Zoe grabbed her arm. 'Hang on. Something's wrong.'

Sally lowered the axe and Zoe hefted up the dragon lamp from the floor. It powered blindingly across the tiny room, illuminating the sofa and the sideboard and the tatty curtains, putting Kelvin's face into sharp relief against the rock. He didn't react to the light. Not at all. He remained in the same position, his lolling head banging rhythmically into the frame. There was a mark on his forehead where it was making contact, but no blood. And the banging was lackadaisical. More of a spasm than an intention.

'Why's he so low down?'

Sally shook her head, transfixed by his face. 'Isn't he kneeling?'

'No. It's something else.'

Together the two women took a step into the room. Zoe shook the torch, moved it randomly to create a strobe effect. Then she took another step forward and shone it straight into his eyes. Still he didn't react. His eyes stared forward, black and blank, as if focused on something in the window-frame.

Sally let out all her breath, walked to the window and put the axe straight through the gla.s.s. Kelvin's body swayed a little, but he didn't look up at her. His head jerked forward and made contact with the frame again, just inches from her face, then snapped back. She saw his eyes under the lowered lids. Saw the blackness. Saw the scar in his skull that snaked down from his ear into the collar of his checked s.h.i.+rt. His face was pulled back in a grimace. There was some blood on the front of his s.h.i.+rt, as if maybe it had come from his mouth.

'He's dead,' she said. 'Dead.'

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