Skin

by Mo Hayder

  The letter M.

  The air came out of her lungs fast. She sat down on the garage floor and put her head back, trying to breathe. She knew where she’d seen the coat before. It hadn’t been on one of Thom’s ex-girlfriends. It had been at work. The photo of a replica of this coat had been circulated to everyone in the force that morning. That and the green dress and a mobile phone, spread out on a table. There was even a copy of the photo pinned on the noticeboard over her desk.

  Dropping the clip, she got to her feet and kicked open the door into the house. She went to the toilet, squatted at the bowl and retched, letting everything come up, heaving until it was just thin brown trickles of saliva. She stayed there for a while afterwards, one hand on the seat, the other holding her hair out of her face, spitting the taste out of her mouth, staring blankly at the bottle of Toilet Duck sitting on the floor behind the U-bend.

  It wasn’t the smell of that poor contorted human in her boot that was making her throw up. It wasn’t any of that. It was that M on the money clip. M for Misty.

  Misty Kitson. The missing footballer’s wife.

  Flea spat again, sat back on her heels and wiped her mouth. Thom was in more trouble than he could possibly, possibly imagine.

  And she didn’t know what to do next.

  10

  When Caffery arrived at the mortuary the remains of Lucy Mahoney were already on the central table, the lights powering down on her, the huge fans in the floor and ceiling roaring, sucking air in from the outside and drawing away the foul smell. The brown-smeared sheet she’d been wrapped in lay open on another table. In it, a scattering of maggots squirmed and crawled over each other.

  Caffery put on the mortuary’s bootees and gloves, came into the room, crouched at the head of the block and peered into the mess of her hair.

  ‘You’re DI Caffery.’

  He glanced up. The district DI, a guy who looked as if he spent a lot of time in front of the mirror each morning, stood a pace away. He had his hands in his pockets and was half turned sideways so he didn’t have to look at the body. This was a suicide but Lucy was female, and protocol put a CID officer of at least inspector level at the post-mortem: to rule out rape or sexual assault. From his face Caffery guessed the DI wasn’t ecstatic at having to be there.

  ‘We met at that SIO’s investigation policy meeting in Taunton. Remember?’

  Caffery straightened. ‘Yeah,’ he lied. ‘Good to see you again. How’s it going?’

  ‘Fine.’ He jingled the loose change in his pockets. Still didn’t look at the body. ‘But Major Crime? For a suicide? Anything about this I should know?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘No one warned me.’

  ‘Don’t worry about it. Forget I’m here.’

  ‘Would be nice to know, that’s all.’

  ‘Hello, boys.’ They turned. The pathologist stood in the doorway pulling on latex gloves, eyeing them both. Beatrice Foxton. Caffery knew her from London – they were both refugees from the Met. A formidable woman in her late fifties and drop-dead gorgeous. Beatrice smoked, drank, raced horses and took trekking holidays in places like Uzbekistan. She also had perfect skin, cornflower blue eyes and lots of hair that she wore as it grew out of her head: long, grey and wavy.

  ‘Lucky me. Two men.’ She made a show of snapping on the second latex glove. Pulled it carefully down her fingers. Gave a dirty smile, as if she was going to ask one of them to bend over. ‘Right. Who’s first?’

  Caffery gave a thin smile. ‘Beatrice. You haven’t changed.’

  ‘Really, Jack. I’m insulted. I meant which of you has primacy? I see two DIs. I don’t know which I’m working with. I have to ask.’

  ‘It’s him.’ He nodded at his oppo.

  Beatrice gave the DI a cool look, then raised an eyebrow at Caffery. He knew what she was thinking: she was wondering what the hell MCIU wanted with a suicide. She wasn’t stupid enough to ask. ‘OK, OK. Come on.’ She tucked her long grey hair into a surgeon’s cap decorated with SpongeBob SquarePants cartoons and gestured at the morticians. ‘Shall we do it?’

  As the door closed everyone jostled for space: the coroner’s officer, the district DI, the photographer, who stood at the head of the table chatting quietly with one of the CSIs. The two mortuary attendants stood nearby and Caffery found a place to the right where he could lean against one of the other tables, arms folded. Back on the murder squad in the Met he’d done enough postmortems to have learnt ways to get through them. He’d learnt how not to think about the human being the corpse had once been: how to see decomposed meat and not a person. Scraps of hair, sometimes they didn’t help, sometimes they started a flicker of something, a flicker of reminding him that this was a person, but he’d even learnt to look past those most of the time.

  The district DI had found a place by the sinks, as far from the table as possible, and was trying to look nonchalant. He was popping extra-strong mints into his mouth on the heel of his hand and sneaking suspicious glances at Caffery. His face was shiny with sweat.

  Beatrice swung the microphone on a rotating arm out over the table so it was near her mouth. She gave the date, the time, the place, the names of those present. ‘I’m looking at the remains of a woman presumed to be . . . ?’ She glanced at the DI.

  ‘Uh – Lucy Mahoney.’ He tore his eyes away from the corpse, from the sodden clothing drenched in brown fluids, and forced himself to look at Beatrice. ‘That’s what we’re thinking. Date of birth, oh two oh one ’seventy-eight. Been a misper for three days.’

  ‘And am I supposed to be looking for an ID too?’

  ‘Next of kin’s IDed the clothing. Her ex-husband. But she’s . . .’ he gestured at what was left of the corpse’s face ‘. . . not really in a state for him to ID.’

  ‘Have we got any personal descriptives?’

  ‘He’s a bit fragile about it at the moment. Someone’s trying to reach the family liaison officer from when she was a misper, hoping he or she’s got something in the descriptive file, something more detailed. But on the plus side we don’t have to wait for dentals from the dentist or the practice board because the department right here in the hospital has her records on file. She had an extraction under anaesthetic two months ago. Can you believe our luck? They should be here any time now.’

  ‘In that case, if she’s out of rigor . . .’ Beatrice switched off the mic, lifted Mahoney’s hand and flexed the arm ‘. . . which – ah, yes – she is, nice and bendy, I’ll do some bitewings and some periapicals when we’re done. Save the poor ex the trauma of looking at her.’

  She switched the mic back on and checked the hanging scale digital readout.

  ‘Clothed, the subject weighs fifty-five kilos. Usual caveat, though, that there’s considerable decomposition so I suggest it would be lunacy to take that as a reliable indicator of weight before death.’ She looked up at the morticians. ‘Fester? Lurch?’ Caffery watched Beatrice, half a smile twitching his mouth. He’d never known anyone quite like her. Every PM she did, whatever mortuary, she always called the morticians Fester and Lurch. And always got away with it too. Incredible. ‘Move her up a bit.’

  The morticians shifted the body so that what was left of Lucy’s neck was resting on the block there. Beatrice walked slowly around the table, talking into the mic as she went, bending every now and then to inspect any part of the body that caught her attention. ‘The decedent is wearing a long green skirt – some sort of velvet – a blouse patterned with flowers, striped woollen sweater, striped tights, lace-up boots, also with a pattern of some description. Clothing has been photographed and logged, so now I’m going to remove it.’

  She took her time snipping away at the skirt, peeling it away from the places it had become stuck to the skin, cutting through the sodden blouse. She used a hook to pull the bra out, it was embedded so deep into the flesh. Under the clothing Lucy’s flesh was different, not black and covered with maggots, but hard and soapy – duck-egg blue. Soon all her clothing had been
clipped away and passed to the crime-scene manager, who was now checking that each article was properly bagged and labelled. There was a set of door-keys in her pocket, but nothing else. No handbag, money or makeup.

  ‘Where was she found?’

  ‘Next to a railway line.’

  ‘Urban?’

  ‘Rural.’

  ‘She’s done well,’ Beatrice said. ‘Not been pulled around too much. Sometimes they come to me in twenty different bags – the way foxes scatter a corpse around, you’d think it was a game. Do you remember that woman on the golf course in Beckenham? You worked on it, Jack, if I recall. Took six men all day to find all of her and there were still bits missing. Still, s’pose foxes’ve got to eat too.’ She bent over and addressed the corpse. ‘All right, my love. I’m just going to move you a little.’ She lifted the body at the hips. Peered under it. Fluid seeped slowly out from between the slack, yellowish buttocks. ‘There are plenty of post-mortem artefacts here.’

  Caffery took a step closer. ‘Post mortem?’

  ‘It’s not that clear, but can you see here? On the posterior surface of the trunk there are some excoriations.’ She used a gloved finger to point to an area of skin. ‘Ants, I’d guess. Or some other insect.’

  She lowered the corpse and slowly checked the surface of the thighs, belly and arms, running her fingers over the skin, pausing to check each area. She took a hand, lifting it and crouching at eye level with the table so she could peer into Mahoney’s armpit. Something had caught her eye. She angled the little gooseneck light so it shone on to the hollow there.

  The district DI took a step nearer. ‘What?’

  ‘There’s a little wound. Just here.’

  She poked at it, then shook her head, dismissing it. ‘Surgery. Not recent, maybe a year, two years ago. Not great as an identifier, even a secondary one, but it might have popped up on the personal descriptive. If the dentals don’t arrive at least we’ve got something.’

  ‘What kind of surgery?’

  ‘Keyhole – probably endoscopic thoracic surgery. Could be a lobectomy for lung cancer, that sort of thing. Maybe a biopsy incision. Nice neat mark. Made a better job of it than whoever did her Caesarean.’ She straightened and ran the tip of a gloved finger across the woman’s pelvis. ‘Bloody awful job. Shoot the obstetrician, I say. Now, what about these other scars? These are more important.’ She turned Lucy’s left hand over and studied the inside of the arm. ‘Incised wounds to the right wrist. On the left wrist one wound has partially incised the radial artery. A second has incised the ulnar artery.’

  Lucy’s arm hadn’t been transected but sliced longitudinally from top to bottom, the sides like dried meat now, opened to show the intricate network of blood vessel and nerve. Not from side to side. Caffery had seen that before: it was the most effective way to end your life. He bent over, hands on his knees, and peered into the hair again.

  ‘So she was serious about what she was doing,’ Beatrice said. ‘At least on this wrist. Not so hot on the right side – which is what you’d expect. This second wound is gaping. It’s transacted the volar carpal ligament and exposed the transverse carpal ligament and the flexor digitorum.’

  ‘There was a bottle of pills next to the body,’ the DI said. ‘Temazepan. And a Stanley knife.’

  ‘Stanley sounds about right. It would have to’ve been a mounted blade that made these – there’s enough pressure associated here that it would’ve left cuts on the fingers if it was just a razor . . .’

  It took Caffery a moment or two to notice she’d stopped talking. He looked up to find her staring at him. Frowning. She put Lucy Mahoney’s hand down, came round the table to him and stopped quite close so she could speak without being heard by the others.

  ‘Jack,’ she murmured, ‘I’ve been polite to you, haven’t asked you any questions, haven’t made a fuss about you crowding my room, but if you’re looking for something why don’t you just tell me?’

  He glanced at the DI, straightened and put his face close to Beatrice’s, then spoke in a low voice: ‘Comb her hair, will you, Beatrice? Give it a comb and a wash. See if it’s been cut.’

  ‘Cut? What sort of cut? Trevor Sorbie cut?’

  ‘Hacked. Clipped, shaved. Anything that looks odd.’

  She gave him a long, curious look, then turned to the mortician. ‘Fester? Comb her hair through, my love. Rinse it out for me.’

  The mortician did as he was told. He drew a comb through Lucy Mahoney’s hair and inspected the tiny bits of debris that fell on to the paper he held underneath. Then he placed the paper on the exhibits trolley, and rinsed the hair with the small hose attached to the examination table.

  Beatrice and Caffery bent over the head. Cleaned up, Lucy Mahoney’s hair was reddish brown. It straggled out in long, damp curls. There were no cuts or shaved areas.

  ‘Not what you were expecting?’ she asked.

  ‘Thank you, Beatrice.’ Caffery pulled off the gloves and turned towards the door. ‘I’ll try not to darken your day again.’

  11

  Small though Flea was, she knew how to use her body. Dressed in her force combats, a neat white T-shirt and dark glasses over her red-rimmed eyes, she was a force to be reckoned with as she stood blocking the entrance to the driveway. The moment he saw her the taxi driver pulled up short. She held up a hand and swung straight into the back seat. No one, she thought darkly, was going to take a car to the front of her house for a while.

  It was a warm afternoon and the taxi driver had the air-conditioner on, but they’d only gone a few hundred yards before he began to sniff. Flea, sitting stonily in the back, her arms crossed, her feet planted solidly on the floor, raised her eyes and found him looking at her in the rear-view mirror. He sniffed again, narrowing his eyes suspiciously, trying to look down at her clothing in the reflection. ‘Off somewhere nice?’ he said steadily. ‘Going somewhere nice on this nice day?’

  ‘No.’ She opened the window to let the air in. ‘I’m not going anywhere nice. I’m going to see my brother.’

  She pulled out the phone. She’d called Thom six times already. Each time he’d dumped her straight into his mailbox. There was no point in calling him again. She could call her dad’s oldest friend, Kaiser, but he’d never had sympathy for Thom. Anyway, she’d leant on him too much in the last few days. She dropped the phone into her lap and leant back in the seat. The air coming in was sweet, warm and full of buttercups, bringing with it a sense of the west, a sense of the sea out past Bristol and Wales. She’d known these lanes all her life. She’d grown up here with the views of the seven sacred hills, the Georgian townhouses of Bath cradled between them, with the distant view of Sally-in-the-Wood and beyond it the Avon valley.

  She thought about Thom, about how everyone had worried over him as a child. He was underweight, too small for his age. He got infections easily, learnt to walk late, and always seemed to find the fastest way to trouble. Mum and Dad had had to dig deep to keep their patience with him. And sometimes they’d failed.

  She remembered coming in from the garden one day. Out of the sunlight, into the cool. It was the school holidays and her parents were in but the house was silent, which made her hesitate and go upstairs quietly. She found her mother first, sitting on the edge of the bed in the big double room. She was dressed in shorts and green Scholl sandals, and was staring at herself in the mirror. Her long white fingers pressed a pair of headphones to her ears and something about her posture, about the tension in her hands, the way her feet were crabbed up in the sandals, told Flea not to approach. Then Jill Marley had looked at her daughter. There was no expression on her face. They held each other’s eyes for almost a minute. Then Jill had turned back to the mirror.

  The door to Thom’s room on the other side of the landing was half open. Flea tiptoed over to it and inside saw an odd tableau. Dad was in the middle of the room, kneeling. Thom, who was about eight at the time, stood a pace away, facing him. They weren’t speaking or moving, just staring at
each other. Dad’s face had the look on it that he sometimes got when he was determined to do something, as if he believed the force of his gaze was enough to cut through mountains. At first Flea thought they were having a conversation. Then she saw it wasn’t a conversation they were in the middle of. It was violence.

  David Marley took a breath, closed his eyes and slapped his son across the face. It wasn’t the first slap that afternoon, Flea knew. She could tell that this had been going on for a long time: Dad staring at Thom, Thom staring back, every few seconds Dad lifting his hand and slapping him. She understood what was happening, too. Dad was trying to make Thom react. But he wouldn’t. She could’ve told Dad he was wasting his time. Thom stood, mouth slightly open, eyes focused in mid-air. He wouldn’t react. He wouldn’t cry. That was just Thom for you. Irritating, distant and otherworldly. Not quite with it.

  And now he was all she had left in the world. With Mum and Dad gone, Thom was all she had left to convince her that their childhood had really happened.

  After their parents’ accident Thom had refused to move back into the family home with his sister and now he lived in a thirties semi on the outskirts of Bristol. It was built identically to the others in the street, with tile-hung walls and diamond-shaped leaded panes in the windows. It was tidy. There was an empty milk bottle with a note in it on the immaculately swept doorstep. Thom hadn’t been able to find a job in years and recently his energy had gone into tending the tiny house while his girlfriend went out to work. Thom – poor, hopeless Thom, so ill-equipped to deal with the world. And so, so stupid.

  ‘You should have called first.’ He opened the door a crack, just allowing his face to peer through. ‘You should have called. Why didn’t you?’

  ‘I did call,’ she hissed. ‘Your phone was switched off.’ She stepped forward, pushing the door, expecting him to give way. But he didn’t. ‘Thom. You know why I’m here.’