‘You know when you get rid of a skin you were really enjoying and its like watching the good stuff go up in flames? This is the opposite.’
‘But won’t they just set up another ring somewhere else?’
‘Of course. It’ll take them a few weeks, though.’
Petra wriggled into her sleeping bag, on the chaise longue. Rose listened to a long sigh escape her lungs.
‘What good does it do, then?’ she murmured.
‘It helps me.’
‘Helps you what?’
‘Feel good about myself.’
‘Is that all that matters?’ said Rose, feeling a pain inside, a cutting emotion to which she couldn’t begin to put a name.
‘It’s like… It’s like you’re the most important thing in your own universe.’
‘I am. We all are. What I don’t get is why you won’t admit you should be the most important thing in yours.’
Later, when she was on the verge of finding sleep again, Petra said softly to her, ‘Keep trying, Rose. One day you’ll understand.’
2013. After Starguard.
Is there really life after Starguard? Before this hunt kicked off I would have said yes. I had said my goodbyes to Phineas, and thought myself done with it all. Max bought me out, so there was no debt left to pay; I never expected to find myself willingly asking a favour of Phin again.
He sits at the polished glass bar of his club, sipping his vodka tonic. He’s aged, but the eyes are the same. Untouched by the life, somehow immune to all complications of skin. He always did look a little greasy to the touch with that permanent tan; he shines under the club spotlights, as if it all slips away from him.
It’s simple, he said to me, when Max paid him back for the clothes, the contacts, the cost of the opportunity. Don’t ever fall in love. It’s a choice.
He lived as if that were true. Perhaps it was, for him. A different partner every night, paid for so there was no chance to prefer one to the others. He never retraced his steps, that was the rumour.
If I make him sound like a monster then I’ve only explained one half of him, for all these things stem from the practicality that protects him. To live by your own rules and never deviate from them – that gives him a power that goes beyond charm. I do believe he has never meant to cause anybody deliberate harm. In fact, he’s gone out of his way to shut down the worst excesses of human behaviour he’s come across. But I now think it’s all to protect the sweet soul that I sometimes glimpse in him, and if you get caught up in his defence mechanism then he’d only think you an idiot.
Still, I think he’s always had a soft spot for me.
It’s early evening for the club – before midnight – and it won’t start heating up until after two. So right now the music is only soft jazz, and I don’t have to raise my voice to make myself heard.
‘I’m betting you already know why I’m here.’
‘I knew you’d work it out, Rose. I hear you’re up in Lincolnshire. How’s that?’
‘Different.’
‘So why go back to the work now? Hanging clothes on racks not cutting it for you?’
‘Max asked me,’ I say. I take a sip of my mineral water.
‘That’s not it, though, is it? It was the thought of those old skins, being stroked. Being used. You would have moved on for good if he hadn’t kept those old skins.’
‘What do you do with yours?’ I ask, giving in to the temptation to make it personal.
‘Take them down the public incinerator,’ he says. ‘I know, that’s not in fashion. I had you down for a burner too, but then this old skin popped up on the radar and I thought – nobody loved Max like you did. Then I heard about the burglary and it all made sense. Did he keep it without you knowing?’
‘It was a misunderstanding.’
Phin raises an eyebrow. When I don’t elaborate, he says,
‘We wear ourselves, then we peel ourselves away. We change and we change. How strange it is, the things we become, and the things we throw away. Do you know that poem? One of the Stuck Six wrote it, after she moulted.’
‘No.’
‘Well. It’s not important. I did you a favour, getting word to Petra before some crazy came along and snapped it up.’
‘Thank you.’
‘So let’s say we’re even. We’ve helped each other out enough for that, I think.’
He might mention things I’m desperate not to talk about. The warehouse flashes through my mind, so I move the conversation along. ‘How did you hear about it?’
He smiles. ‘It was being shouted out, Rose. Everyone was talking about it – the thefts, and then this appearance, from nowhere, of a prime Max Black contact skin, up close and personal, with the smell of sex on it.’ I wince, and he pats my hand. ‘Sorry, but that’s how it was broadcast. There was nothing subtle about it. I’d watch your back, if you’re carrying that skin around. There are lots of unscrupulous people in the game.’
I stand up. ‘Thanks,’ I say.
‘You going to destroy it, then?’
‘It should have been destroyed at the start.’
‘Yes, it should,’ he agrees.
I remember how much I like him. Like is different from love – it can survive. It’s held in the brain, perhaps, and not the skin. Phin found me working clubs as a bouncer, considering moving into fighting or selling myself, and he set me up in a job. With Max. Then he let Max buy out my contract. It was all about money, but it was never cruel, and he could so easily have been cruel, considering all the things he’s seen.
And then he was my employer again, in a different way. He still is Petra’s employer. They both try to make themselves feel better about the world, and that’s fair enough, I think. Yes, it’s fair enough.
He once told me something about myself, that helped me to make sense of the inexplicable. For that, along with everything else, I will forever think good thoughts of him. I lean in and kiss his greasy cheek goodbye.
‘I’ve got a gig minding Trad Prester,’ he says. ‘Two weeks, London, next month. Cash in hand, if you’re interested, as a one-off. You still in shape?’ He looks me up and down.
‘Not even a little bit.’
‘Ah well. You should do something about that before age catches up with you.’
‘It already has.’ I turn to leave, and then remember one more question I should ask. ‘Smith. She was working for Max the night of the burglary. Can I speak to her? Is she here?’
‘Smith?’
‘Skin fighter you liberated. Korean.’
‘Ahh…’ He swallows, and the movement draws attention to the folds of skin around his Adam’s apple, visible above the opening of his cream shirt. So he has aged, after all. ‘No, you can’t speak to her. She went back to fighting.’
‘She chose to go back in?’
‘Some of them do. They get the taste for it.’
‘Where is she now?’
He shakes his head. ‘Got in a nasty bout, nothing to do with me.’
‘She’s dead?’
‘She was lovely,’ Spice says. ‘Straight off the container ship, they got her.’
‘You got her out, though.’
He takes a long drink. ‘Well, we didn’t speak the same language anyway.’
‘When was this?’
‘Day before yesterday. It’s all very fresh in the mind right now.’ He taps the side of his head. ‘Never mind. It’ll pass.’
I don’t ask him anything else. I leave it at that. Enough of London. I feel the same way about it as I feel about Phineas Spice. I have fond memories but I’ll be damned if I make too many new ones.
› • ‹
A bad night’s sleep in a cheap hotel later, I take the first train to Chichester. On the journey, the carriage window stuck half open and the businessman behind me shouting into his phone over the wind, I make a list of my skins:
Age 16 – first moult. Bristol. Gave it to Mum.
Age 21 – Early second moult triggered by stress
. Finals at York tied with a break-up with Steve (who moulted me off). Burned the skin in a bin in the bedroom, the fire got out of control, fire brigade called, I got suspended. Joined the RAF.
Age 28 – Third moult while on active duty, Cyprus, established pattern of stressful moults. Kicked out of the RAF as unstable. Tried to bury the skin; the RAF took it and disposed of it properly as per regs.
Age 34 – Fourth moult. Sussex. Max told me he’d burned the skin.
Age 38 – Fifth moult. London. Sudden early moult, again triggered by stress. The warehouse. Skin was burned on the scrubland there.
My sixth moult is not due for another couple of years, at least, if things go according to the pattern.
So I have the fourth moult with me, in my backpack, and I will burn it as soon as the opportunity presents itself. That leaves only the first moult to account for. I know I’m only feeling paranoid, but I have to be sure that nobody can get to it. Even though the fourth skin, the one impregnated with Max, is the only one that could fetch big money. My first teenaged moult – well, there are people who would buy that for a few quid and a cheap rub from an online auction, but I’m not scared of those people. I only feel sorry for them.
But I need that skin gone anyway.
When Mum got ill my Aunt Alice took in her old skins. She’d been a hoarder all her life, and although I said they should be cremated along with her, Alice wouldn’t hear of it. I hadn’t thought about it before, but I suppose that means Alice still has my first skin too, so I need to find the time to return to Bristol.
But first I have to try to do my job.
2013. One skin away.
The industrial estate on the south side of Chichester holds the usual small businesses for an affluent city: a curio shop next to a gym next to a vintage car mechanic next to a reclaimed antique tile seller. And in Unit 43B, tucked away at the dead end, there’s the supplier of Max’s damned pills. It’s a clean white box of a building with blacked-out windows.
Mallory Peace Industries
It’s better than the back streets of Paris, although I’m expecting to find the same kind of impossible promises inside. The pills we popped together once upon a time guaranteed current skin longevity. They were meant to give us longer in love. I wonder what Mallory Peace are selling him, and if he still wants to stay in the same skin forever.
Perhaps, this time, he wants to speed up the process, or have the new skin underneath look younger. Does that sound like something Max would want? It’s difficult to remind myself that I really don’t know him any more.
There’s a security camera over the main entrance, and a small intercom along the white wall. I push the little round button, not sure yet what I’m going to say. This is not how a proper private detective would do it. What would Petra lead with? Her voice won’t come to me.
‘Can I help you?’ A man’s voice: pretty young, I’d guess.
‘Max Black sent me.’ I don’t elaborate.
I wait through the silence. The buzzer sounds, and the door swings back.
What’s inside is a surprise. Isn’t that always the way, though? What’s inside, behind, underneath that first layer, waiting to be found.
Focus, I tell myself.
The professional front is not a front at all. This really is a laboratory, an expensive operation, and the people I can see through the wall of safety glass that separates the workplace from the reception area are the real deal, with white coats and studious expressions. They are of all ages and colours, tapping on computers, using unidentifiable equipment; these aren’t three college boys with bad hair, kitchen foil and a Bunsen burner.
Perhaps I should have expected better of Max.
No, no I shouldn’t. He liked them on the seedy side. The back street exchanges, money in envelopes. He got a kick out of all that. This is a development; perhaps one that happened after a skin change.
The workers don’t look at me. They must be used to visitors. This is certainly a room for that purpose alone – for the process to be observed. I look around me, at the upholstered chairs with curved arms and the pastel drawings of flowers on the walls. It reminds me of a dentist’s waiting room.
I would sit quietly and wait but I tell myself that I’m here for a reason. I shouldn’t have the patience or the personality type for waiting, right? Time is money. So I steel myself and tap on the glass. Everyone looks up, frowning in my direction. One of the white coats disengages from a computer and comes my way: an older woman with orange-rimmed glasses, bright, probably meant to be fun, but they give her a fierce and owlish look.
She puts her hands to the glass wall and a section slides back. The waft of air from the laboratory is cool and sweet-smelling. ‘Rose Allington?’
‘Did Max tell you I’d be dropping in?’
‘He did. He speaks highly of you. I’m Anna Mallory.’
We shake hands, and she slides the door closed behind her. So I’m not getting the guided tour.
‘It’s your name on the sign,’ I say.
‘One of them.’
‘So Max deals with you directly?’
‘He did, when he first signed up for the service. Since then he’s not come in person. A young woman has picked up the treatment package. But we’re expecting him in a month’s time, for an evaluation. To see how it’s going.’
The young woman – that would be Taylor, the bodyguard. ‘What treatment package is he on?’ I look around the room again, to make sure I haven’t missed it. But no, there’s no price list, no explanations. No written material at all.
‘I’m afraid that’s confidential,’ she says.
‘I have Mr Black’s confidence.’
‘In that case I suggest you ask him directly. How many questions do you have, Ms Allington? Should we sit down?’
‘Yes,’ I say. ‘We should sit down.’
So we perch on the chairs, both bolt upright, and I ask far more questions than I had intended to, mainly to annoy her. To see if she can be annoyed. Which, apparently, she can’t.
‘Who knew about Mr Black’s package? The times of delivery, say?’
‘Me. Employees who deal with delivery preparation.
They’re all vetted carefully. I can supply you with a list of names, but I’d rather you didn’t speak to them directly unless absolutely necessary.’
‘How’s your online security?’
‘We employ a firm called Bastion Solutions to handle that. I took the liberty of asking them to check our records when Mr Black told me about the burglary. They reported no threats or compromises, but they are expecting your call.’
And so on, and so on. Every question I ask she’s already thought of, and with every stonewall I find myself getting more and more curious as to what she’s actually promised Max. Because she’s the kind of person who doesn’t promise what she can’t deliver.
‘When did you first meet Mr Black?’ I ask her.
For the first time her eyes flicker. So here it is – a lie. ‘Eighteen months ago.’
‘Did you approach him, or did he come to you? How did he find out about you?’
‘He phoned in an enquiry. I’d imagine he heard about us from somebody else in his line of work. We’re quite well known in the entertainment industry now, and nearly all of our clients come through a personal recommendation.’
‘Do you know which client recommended you to Max?’
She smiles. Well, of course she wouldn’t answer that. But the smile is thin, and unamused. We’re in territory she doesn’t want to traverse.
‘Okay,’ I say. ‘Never mind. I’ll ask him myself. Can I get that list of names? Employees with access to Mr Black’s records?’
‘I’ll email it. Could you?’ She hands me a pen and a small orange notepad that matches the shade of her glasses. When I flip it open I find only pristine pages; it’s brand new. I write my name, phone number and email address, feeling her eyes upon my writing.
‘Thank you,’ she says as I hand it back, and the wa
y she says it makes me think that she’s won this confrontation.
Something important has passed between us and I don’t even know what it is. Petra would have known. Petra would have solved this case by now.
We stand, and say polite goodbyes, before she taps in a code on the doorpad to release me back into the wild. I walk to the hire car with no idea of what just really happened.
2007. Big picture.
It made for a strange evening – sitting in the dark with Petra, watching the screen. A story of romance unfolded, to the swoops and slides of well-played strings, and Max Black portrayed a dying businessman, hard and humourless, falling for his ditzy carer who brought sunshine to his final days. The actress was new to Rose. She had a miraculous complexion: so clean, so smooth. Rose spent the entire film wondering if it was digitally enhanced. Was anybody ever that beautiful? In comparison Max’s skin looked tight, tired. But he was meant to be dying, according to the script.
Afterwards they rode the tube to Phineas’s place, and sat around with him, taking three seats around a square table. Phin provided a jug of margarita.
‘To us,’ he said, once their frosted glasses were filled. Rose touched glasses with Phin, then with Petra, and drank. The film was an easy place to start a conversation. Max the Object could be discussed as easily as one discusses the weather, or the decor, or the latest trash in the newspapers.
‘He looked old, didn’t he?’ said Petra.
‘Older,’ Rose conceded.
‘I hear he’s moving into directing movies,’ said Phin.
‘The girl I’ve got guarding him now says he’s working on a new project. He doesn’t do anything but work. She wants a change of assignment. Says he’s boring.’ He smoothed a hand along his bald head. ‘Even a movie star isn’t enough for the young now. They want adventure. Speaking of which…’
‘Yep, get down to it then, Phin,’ said Petra cheerily, pouring herself more margarita.
The Loosening Skin Page 4
