Snakeskins

by Tim Major

  “You’d better get out of there quick,” Ayo said. He let Kit pass, then his eyes flicked to Caitlin. He gave no sign of suspicion. His expression was one of warmth and sympathy. Caitlin wasn’t sure whether it was relief that she felt, or terror.

  The door closed with a dull thud, followed by the click of the automatic lock. Caitlin heard Ayo’s and Kit’s muffled voices as they walked away.

  She slumped onto the bed. Her fingers tugged at the itchy fabric of the leggings, then her hand fell to the slick, wipe-clean bed sheet.

  This was a mistake.

  ELEVEN

  When Caitlin woke she felt as though she were bobbing and swaying in her bed, like a body-memory of a sea journey or a rollercoaster ride.

  Her throat was dry. She reached around for the glass of water that she always kept on the floor, despite her dad’s warnings that it would one day spill onto the hair straighteners and hairdryer that she left littered around.

  The glass wasn’t there. Her fingers grazed cold flooring, not the thick carpet of her bedroom.

  She opened her eyes. A neon strip light fizzed above her. The ceiling was plain beige and the pale expanse of the opposite wall was interrupted only by a skylight. She couldn’t make out any difference between its top and bottom halves that might indicate land and sky. The room might as well be floating in a white void.

  She rolled off the bed, landing heavily. Her bare feet stung with the cold of the polished floor. As she ducked under the bed for her slippers, her legs wobbled. Her head ached terribly. She had only experienced hangovers a handful of times – she had avoided heavy drinking since one evening last year which had resulted in her spitting at Evie and then snogging Evie’s man of the moment, Paul Farrier, even though he wore too much Lynx and quoted Shepperton teen comedies incessantly – but this certainly felt like one.

  Was it possible that dehydration alone could leave her feeling this way? It didn’t explain the shuddering, which continued even once her feet were protected from the cold by the slippers. She touched her neck gingerly, then her cheeks. Her skin was hot. She put her palm flat on her forehead. A throbbing sensation passed through her in a sickly wave. Gagging, she slumped onto the bed.

  She remembered what she had asked Kit on her second visit to the care home: “Do they stop you sleeping?” and Kit’s answer in a shaking voice: “I don’t know.”

  What had they done to her? To them both?

  There was a knock at the door. Instinctively, she pulled her legs up onto the bed. She was genuinely afraid. The worst part was that it was nothing to do with being here on false pretences. Kit didn’t know what was happening to her in the care home either. She had been afraid, too.

  The door opened. It was Ayo.

  Questions crowded her mind. What was happening to her? What was really going on? Instead, she said, weakly, “I’m so thirsty.”

  “I know,” Ayo said. His wide, kind eyes made her feel a little better already. “I know. I’ll bring you some water when you’re in there. I’m sorry – that’s all I can do for you, right now.”

  Caitlin gripped the steel rail of the bed. “I’m not going anywhere.”

  Ayo frowned. “You don’t want to see her?”

  “Her?”

  “You have a visitor.”

  The surge of relief, or adrenaline, made Caitlin want to puke. Kit. Kit had come back, after all. She leapt off the bed, gritting her teeth to make her body cooperate. She pushed past the nurse and into the corridor.

  “You have to walk,” Ayo hissed. “They’re watching us.”

  Caitlin brushed off the strangeness of the comment. Why would anyone be watching him, as well as her?

  “I know where I’m going.” She set off at a jog.

  She reached the visitors’ lounge, but before she could see through the glass, Ayo pulled her away. “Wrong door. That one’s for visitors.”

  Caitlin allowed herself to be led to the unmarked, painted metal door. Ayo accompanied her through the dark antechamber. Caitlin rushed towards the visitors’ lounge annex. Intensely bright daylight from the cathedral window stung her eyes, intensified and doubled by the reflections of the transparent barrier. She shielded her eyes to make out the girl on the other side of the wall.

  No. Not a girl.

  Not Kit.

  Not even Evie.

  The sunlight accentuated the creases in the woman’s face, which were vertical around her mouth and in fans at the corners of her eyes. She wore a tweed hunting hat and a thick coat. At first, Caitlin struggled to remember where they had met before.

  “It’s good to see you.” the woman said. She frowned, perhaps noticing Caitlin’s confusion. “It’s Dodie.”

  Once again, Caitlin felt that her body was swaying, even though she wasn’t actually moving. She dropped onto the cushioned chair. Out of the corner of her eye she saw Ayo take his position at her side. He placed a glass of water on the table beside her chair.

  “Of course,” she said in a faint voice. “Thank you for visiting, Dodie. It’s lovely to see you again.”

  She felt no sense of pleasure. If anything, the visit was a turning point, making Caitlin more permanently a resident at the care home.

  Dodie’s mournful eyes shifted around slowly, looking first at Caitlin, then at Ayo.

  “Did you get a good night’s sleep?” she said quietly.

  Caitlin’s mouth was awfully dry. She glugged from the glass of water. “I had strange dreams.”

  The woman exhaled and looked down at her clasped hands. She nodded. “Would you like to tell me about your dreams?”

  Caitlin couldn’t think how to reply. Maybe Dodie was a religious nut. She probably thought that interpreting a Skin’s dreams might give some insight into her soul, or whether she actually had one.

  She shook her head. The last time she remembered dreaming had been before her shedding, before all of this.

  “It’s the funeral today,” she said, hardly noticing that she said it out loud. She felt a wave of guilt – this was the first she had thought about it since she had awoken. “Uncle Tobe.”

  Dodie’s expression was difficult to read. “I heard about what happened. I’m sorry. I really am.”

  “They’ll all be there.”

  “And not you.”

  “And not me.”

  Silence fell again. Dodie sighed, then fished under her chair and retrieved a newspaper. “Shall I read to you?”

  Without thinking, Caitlin blurted out, “Why?”

  Dodie shrugged, calmer now. “To find out what’s happening outside these four walls. Or rather, three and a window, but you know what I mean.”

  “Why?” Caitlin said again. Anger flared up inside her. Even though she knew it was wrong to direct it at this innocent woman, she snapped, “What good would it do me to know about the outside world? I’m never going to leave this place until I die.”

  A sour taste filled her mouth. She was no longer sure whether she was acting the part of a Snakeskin or not. It might be true. If Kit never returned, she might not be released. She wouldn’t ash, of course. At least she would never disappear in a puff of smoke. But that didn’t mean she wouldn’t remain imprisoned here, at least until she surprised everyone by shedding for a second time.

  Dodie’s head tilted. “Before, you seemed interested. You wanted to glimpse the world. At least I thought so. Or have things changed?”

  Caitlin felt intensely aware of the nurse standing at her side. She desperately wanted to shout out, “I’m not a Skin! I’m a human!” But Ayo had already warned her that they were being watched – and it wasn’t as though she could be certain of his help anyway. The only option was to give Kit a chance to make good on her word. If Caitlin revealed what had happened, and she was believed, that might get her out of this awful situation, but what would it mean for Kit? She would be hounded and captured. Being brought back here would be the best-case scenario for her. The worst-case scenario didn’t bear thinking about.

  “It�
��s not fair,” Caitlin said. Her voice shook and she couldn’t bear to look at Dodie’s concerned face. Dodie wasn’t evangelical, or morbid. She was a kind woman, trying to make things better for the Skins in the care home. It was unbearable.

  “It isn’t fair!” Caitlin wailed. “I’m so thirsty, no matter how much of this I drink. I can’t even—” Abruptly, she began to sob.

  Her head bobbed loosely and heavily, making her feel even more seasick. When she finally managed to raise her head, she saw that Dodie was now standing up against the barrier with her palms pressed flat against it.

  “Hush, child,” she whispered. “Hush. I’m here. I understand. I understand.”

  * * *

  A pager message had woken Russell that morning. Come to my house, NOT office, it read. It was from Ellis.

  He had dressed in a hurry, had stubbed his toe on two different items of furniture, and had burned his toast to an inedible crisp before stumbling out of the house. The Summertown bus had dallied for long periods at each stop along Woodstock Road, and each time Russell had been tempted to plunge out of the open doors and run far away. Now he stood at the foot of the driveway to the Blackwood house. He found himself unable to set foot on its gravel.

  Ellis must know. What other reason could there be for summoning him here?

  And if Ellis’s reaction to Russell breaking into his house was not to call the police but to deal with matters himself, then there could be no telling what else might be involved. Among those covert Party officials there might easily be someone responsible for punishing or torturing dissidents. There had always been rumours about the GBP’s treatment of anti-prosperity campaigners who made themselves more than a mere nuisance.

  He must escape while he still could.

  As he was turning to leave, a voice rang out. “Ho, daydreamer!”

  He turned from side to side. He could see nobody, either on the street or in the windows of Ellis’s house.

  “Up here!”

  Ellis was edging along a shallow sloped roof adjoining the arched porch of the house. His boiler suit reminded Russell of the tracksuit he had worn when he saw him climbing the stairs to the hidden door in the servants’ passageway. Perhaps Ellis always dressed casually in his free time.

  Ellis’s arms shot out in the manner of a tightrope walker. His knees bent. “Lost my footing for a second there. Stand over here, would you? If I slip you can break my fall.”

  This didn’t seem the attitude of somebody who intended to conduct any form of torture. Gingerly, Russell crunched up the driveway.

  “What are you actually doing up there, sir?”

  “I believe it’s called abseiling, isn’t it?”

  “Sir?”

  “It was a bloody joke, Russell. Here, toss up that cable, would you? Bugger slipped out of my grasp and I’m damned if I’m scrambling through that window any more times than I absolutely have to. The ladder’s gone walkabout somewhere. Wouldn’t put it past Nell to have taken it to her parents’ house with her. She has a head full of daft ideas.”

  Bewildered, Russell scanned the ground. Sure enough, a thin black cord lay in a snakelike pile to one side of the porch. One end threaded into the house. He threw the loose end up onto the sloped roof. Ellis almost slipped again as he grabbed at it.

  He watched on as Ellis scrambled on his hands and knees to the porch roof, dragging the cable behind him like a serpent’s tail. With a grunt of triumph, he attached the cable to something fixed to the top of the arch, an object Russell hadn’t noticed until now. It was a CCTV camera.

  “That’ll do it,” Ellis said, clapping his hands together and nearly slipping off the roof. “Meet me inside. Door’s open.”

  Russell entered. At the foot of the stairs he listened to Ellis’s distant grunts as he struggled through the window. When he appeared on the landing, Ellis’s hair was in disarray and one arm of his boiler suit was torn. He clapped Russell on the shoulder. “Cuppa before we begin?”

  “Thank you, sir.”

  They stood looking at each other for several seconds before it dawned on Russell that he would be the one making the tea. Ellis followed him into the kitchen, fussing over his torn sleeve, then stood directly behind Russell as he filled the kettle.

  “You said ‘begin’, sir,” Russell said, not daring to turn around. “Begin what?”

  “Well, I’ve already begun, I suppose. But you can take the baton now you’re here. I’ve bought four cameras in all. Then there are the door sensors with something called intrared – or infra? – and remote locks, and the instruction manuals for those are as thick as my arm. You’ll need all your technical knowhow to get the buggers installed.”

  “Are you having security issues, sir?”

  Ellis quietened. “There was an incident, yes. Nothing taken though. But you can’t be too careful. We can’t let these types of characters have unrestricted freedom, isn’t that right?”

  “Somebody broke into your house?” Russell cursed his voice for cracking at the wrong moment.

  “That’s right. Some anti-prosperity vigilante, in my estimation.”

  “But nobody saw anything?” Russell stared at the kettle, willing it to boil. “And you didn’t have CCTV before now?”

  “Goodness, yes,” Ellis replied. “This place has them dotting the walls like barnacles. Caught the whole thing on video.”

  The kettle clicked. Russell lunged for it, missed the handle and scalded his thumb. He swallowed his cry and started filling the two mugs even as his eyes began to tear up. Ellis’s arm snaked past him to retrieve his mug as soon as Russell had poured the milk.

  “And—” Russell cleared his throat and started again. “And what did he look like, this intruder? If it was a he.”

  Ellis waved a hand. “The usual sort. A man in black. Hooded top.” He slurped at his tea and finally moved away to sit at the table. “Could’ve been anyone.”

  For the first time, Russell dared to believe that Ellis hadn’t summoned him here for punishment. He genuinely didn’t suspect that it was Russell who had broken into his house. Emboldened and giddy with relief, he said, “I forgot to ask, sir. How was your trip?”

  Ellis frowned into his mug. “You know. Business trips aren’t meant to be jolly.”

  Russell wished he had the courage to ask more probing questions. What would it take to make Ellis confess that he had been in the house all along? And what further revelations would that admission lead to? He reminded himself that only ten minutes ago he had been convinced that his life was in danger, or at least his career. It was best not to push his luck.

  Ellis had entered a gloomy reverie. They drank their tea in silence. Finally, Ellis heaved himself to his feet, disappeared through the door to the house, and returned with several opened boxes with electrical cables spilling out.

  “I’ll survey the site with you,” Ellis said, “and then I’ll leave you to it. A quick catnap will do me the power of good.”

  Installing the remaining three cameras was straightforward enough, once Russell located the missing ladder in Nell’s workshop. He considered the resulting trail of wires throughout the house to be somebody else’s problem. After browsing the manual for the remote door locks he quickly came to the conclusion that, in fact, the doors would have to be replaced along with the locks, so he put those packages to one side. The infrared door sensors were fiddly and oversensitive. He set off the alarm twice while attempting to install one on the kitchen door, each time summoning a bewildered and unkempt Ellis from upstairs. It was after lunchtime when he finished.

  “Not much of a technical whizz, are you?” Ellis said, not unkindly, as he prodded at the boxes containing the uninstalled items. “Never mind. I’ll summon a tradesman to deal with the rest. But now you have one final task and then it’s back to the office with you.”

  He led Russell through the house. “Can’t be too careful. If there’s prowlers around, there’s certain information that’d be better kept elsewhere. A very pleasan
t fellow installed a safe in my bedroom wardrobe only this morning. Damned if I’m going to haul everything up there myself, though.”

  Russell gawped at Ellis’s back as he followed. After all his efforts to find something incriminating, risking breaking into the Blackwood house in the process, was Ellis now about to lead him directly to his prize?

  He was so convinced that Ellis was heading to the hidden servants’ passage that he kept on walking even after his boss had halted outside his study. Ellis produced a key from his pocket and bent to open the bottom desk drawer. He produced five cuboid box files, placed them on the desk, and opened the uppermost one. He rifled through a dozen or more stiff envelopes, numbered consecutively in thick marker-pen ink. Russell saw that each was sealed with tamper-proof tape.

  “Let me help you with that, sir,” Russell said, reaching out.

  There were still some other items in the drawer. Before Ellis could bend to close it, Russell tipped the open box file upside down. Several of the stiff envelopes dropped noisily onto the desk and one fell onto the floor.

  He made a show of cursing his clumsiness. As he retrieved the envelopes from the desk, he kicked at the one on the floor. It slid beneath the desk and he dived after it.

  “One more. Very sorry about this, sir. I promise I’ll be more careful.” From beneath the desk he could see spilling from the envelope some loose sheaves of paper, pens, what appeared to be an old porn magazine and a three-and-a-half-inch computer disk. There could be no way of tucking any of the papers away without them being noticed. Instead, he made for the smallest item that appeared at all valuable – the floppy disk. He shoved it into his pocket, rescued the dropped envelope, and rose to his feet.

  “Never mind about the butterfingers,” Ellis said. “Right, onwards and upwards.”

  Russell staggered up the stairs, holding the heavy pile of box files steady with his chin. He cursed Ellis for climbing the stairs so slowly. The man appeared utterly exhausted, moving in slow motion.

  In contrast to the rest of the house, Ellis’s bedroom was sparsely furnished. A bed and a white set of a chest of drawers, a matching wardrobe and a bedside table were the only items of furniture. Russell noted with satisfaction that a political memoir and a pair of glasses lay on the bedside table, and a collection of aftershaves on the chest of drawers, but there was no evidence suggesting that Nell shared the bedroom.