Hanging Hill

Hanging Hill Read Online Free PDF

Book: Hanging Hill Read Online Free PDF
Author: Mo Hayder
Tags: Fiction, General, Thrillers
lush blue or gold silk. Everything needed to be dusted. There were two wings, each joined by corridors to the heart of the house where the kitchen and living areas were. The Polish girls took a wing each, while Sally got started with the ironing in the utility room.
    There was always a pile of the pinstriped poplin shirts David wore, in a range of pastel colours, pink and peppermint and primrose. They all had handstitched labels with ‘Ede & Ravenscroft’ written in curlicue script. Missing, she thought, as she filled the steam iron and laid out the first shirt. Missing was never good. Not if it was a teenage girl from a nice family. And then she wondered if the police would have to interview her. She wondered if a man in a uniform would be sent out to the cottage. If, perhaps, he’d notice the way Millie and Sally were living these days and report it back to Zoë. Who wouldn’t be remotely surprised that her dimwit sister with the hopeful smile and the dopey stars in her eyes had at last got her comeuppance from the world and been put where she belonged.
    She’d been ironing for ten minutes when David appeared outside, walking briskly across the gravel drive from the garage. He wasn’t tall but he was powerful – the Polish girls called him ‘the fat man’ – stockily built with cropped grey hair and a year-round suntan. Today he wore a lemon-yellow Gersemi polo shirt, breeches and Italian high boots, and was tapping his short whip against his thigh as he came. He must have been up the road at the stables in Marshfield. He hadn’t removed his jewellery to ride – the sun flashed off the gold chain at his neck and the single gold stud in his ear. He came in through the orangery, stopped briefly in the kitchen and slammed the fridge door. Then he appeared in the utility room.
    ‘The only way to end a good dressage session.’ He was holding in one hand a lead-crystal flute of pink champagne and in the other a bag of peanuts. ‘Peanuts to replace the salts I’ve lost and the Heidsieck to keep the pulse rate up. The only way. Taught me by the best dressage boys in Piemonte.’
    He had an English accent that veered between Australian, East London and Bristol – his ‘U’ sound always came out like an ‘A’, so that ‘hut’ sounded like ‘hat’. She had no idea where he was from but she was sure he hadn’t been born in a huge mansion like this. She didn’t break off from her ironing, but if he noticed her lack of response, it didn’t faze him. He slung himself into a swivel chair that sat in the corner, giving it a half-turn so he could throw his feet up on the worktop. He smelt of aftershave and horses – there were still marks on his forehead where the riding hat had been.
    ‘I’m a lucky man, you know that?’ He used his teeth to open the bag of peanuts, tipped some into his hand and began tossing them into his mouth. ‘I’m lucky because I’ve got a good nose for the people I can trust. Always have had. It’s got me out of a lot of problems. And you, Sally? I’ve already got you. Got you up here.’ He tapped his head. ‘Already locked away. I know what you are.’
    Sally had got used to his occasional sermons: she’d heard him on the phone to his mother, talking about the latest thing he’d seen on the news, how it had upset him and how his already dim view of the human race was getting worse by the day. She’d learned, above all, that she wasn’t expected to respond to his monologues, that he just wanted to be able to talk. This, though, was more personal than usual. She went on with the ironing, but she was paying more attention now.
    ‘See, I know something you won’t admit to anyone.’ He smiled up at her. A slow smile that showed all his teeth and made Sally think of rats and reptiles. ‘I know this is killing you. A woman like you? Scraping shit off other people’s toilets? You weren’t raised to be doing something like this. Those Polish slappers? I look at them and I
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