Skin

by Mo Hayder

  ‘That’s the one.’

  ‘On Friday you told me it wasn’t your case. And now it is.’ He stared at the gloves. ‘I didn’t think Benjy fell in the quarry. Not for a second. He wasn’t stupid. They wouldn’t let me see his body and that didn’t sound right either.’ He raised his eyes. ‘Well? Is it a murder? Is that what you’re here to tell me?’

  ‘No.’ He set the paperweight on the coffee-table next to the two A5 ‘Searched Premises’ forms the search team had left. ‘We do random checks – just reviews on suicides, here and there. It’s something the Home Office are testing in Avon and Somerset. Then they’ll roll it out nationwide.’

  ‘Is that true?’

  Caffery held his eyes.

  ‘Is it?’

  Caffery cleared his throat and nodded at the gloves. ‘Can you put those on?’

  ‘Why? The place has been searched. Has something changed?’

  ‘Put them on, please.’

  Mahoney did what he was told. Caffery sat down opposite him. ‘Mr Mahoney, I’ve got some more questions for you.’

  ‘I gathered.’

  ‘Do you think Lucy was the sort to kill herself?’

  ‘Of course not. I’ve been saying it all along. Haven’t you got this in your notes?’

  ‘Like I said, I’m reviewing the case. It’s come to me cold. First thing I knew about it was Friday morning. Did she know the Strawberry Line? Did she know the area well?’

  ‘She knew it was there, but I’ve never known her go over there.’

  ‘Didn’t have any friends in the area?’

  ‘Not that I know of.’

  ‘What about the quarries over at Elf’s Grotto? Quarry number eight? They call it the suicide quarry.’

  ‘I’m not even sure why you searched it.’

  ‘Her car was found near by. Half a mile away. But you’re telling me she never went to the quarries?’

  ‘No. Odd, isn’t it, that she parked up near them? And she definitely would never have taken Benjy there either. She never took him near water. Didn’t like him getting wet.’

  ‘There was a Stanley knife.’

  ‘So they tell me.’

  ‘Do you know where it came from?’

  ‘Upstairs. Her studio. She used it for her framing work.’

  ‘That’s the door that’s locked.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Why locked?’

  He shrugged. ‘She didn’t like people in there. It’s got all her paintings in it. She was sensitive about them. She didn’t mind me seeing them but hated anyone else in the studio. Once the search team had come through I locked it.’

  ‘Can we get into it?’

  ‘The key’s at my mother’s. It’s an hour’s drive there and back.’

  ‘But the knife’s definitely missing?’

  ‘Yes. I checked the other night, after they’d found her.’

  Caffery looked around the room. At the paperweights catching the light. All clean and sparkling. ‘You last saw Lucy on Sunday?’

  ‘I was here. We had coffee together. I left at five thirty.’

  ‘And she seemed OK to you then?’

  ‘Absolutely fine. Very relaxed.’

  ‘She didn’t tell you she was anxious about anything? Depressed?’

  ‘Not at all.’

  ‘Any of her friends say anything about her being depressed?’

  ‘No. The police went through her address book and interviewed them all and no one could come up with anything. Everyone feels the same way I do. Everyone feels . . .’ He trailed off and Caffery saw the look in his eye. He saw it and he saw his mother again – saw her screaming in the kitchen, holding on to a police officer in the hallway, begging him, ‘Find my little boy. Just do it – go out there now and find my little boy.’

  Caffery closed his eyes. Then he opened them. ‘It’s clean in here. Did you clean it?’

  ‘No. This is how she left it.’

  ‘Was it normal for the house to be this clean?’

  ‘No. To be this clean was unusual. Lucy had . . .’ he hesitated ‘. . . priorities. And, as you can see, she had tastes. Some I don’t share.’

  Caffery picked up the paperweight on the coffee-table and turned it over, idly studying the bottom. ‘The Emporium’ was printed on a gold lozenge-shaped sticker. ‘We never found her phone.’ He replaced the paperweight and picked up another. The same sticker on the bottom. ‘I was at Wells and I went through all the possessions she had on her. I was looking for bills but the officer in charge tells me he left them here. He said it was a bugger of a job because most of the bank statements and bills were missing. In fact, he said there were hardly any records of any sort in the house.’

  ‘I know. I was told they’d got a warrant out. I was told Orange were supposed to be releasing the missing bills.’

  Mahoney was right. But here again the system had favoured people like Misty Kitson whose phone records had come back in hours. When Caffery’d checked he’d found Lucy Mahoney’s records had never arrived. They were jammed in the system somewhere and now her body had turned up no one would bother to chase them. Caffery had Turnbull chasing another warrant to track them down, but it’d be days before they had access to them, days before they learnt what had really happened to Lucy Mahoney in her last hours.

  ‘Didn’t she have somewhere she kept her paperwork?’

  Mahoney pointed to a box file next to the computer. ‘Over there.’

  Caffery put down the paperweight, went to the desk and opened the box. It contained four phone bills, mostly from last year. Only one from this year – January. There were twelve electricity bills, two council-tax bills and ten bank statements, all dating from more than two years ago. He turned round and held out the file to Mahoney. ‘Like this, was it? When you first came in.’

  ‘Exactly like this.’

  ‘Do you know why she’d keep statements for these months and not for others?’

  ‘She was secretive, that’s all I can say. When the police questioned her friends they couldn’t find out anything about her. It was like that even when we were married. I never knew what she was thinking.’

  Caffery gazed around at the walls, the higgledy-piggledy furniture. ‘I can see how she lived, but I’ve got no idea what she looked like. No photos.’

  Mahoney got up. He went to the computer, switched it on, pulled out a small stool and held out his hand. ‘Help yourself. It’s all in here.’

  Caffery sat down. The computer was the newest thing in the place. It was good, fast, a 2.9-gig processor. He took a quick look through her documents. Nothing of interest. The search team would have gone through them with a fine tooth-comb. He opened her email account – two new emails. Both junk. Clicked on to Explorer and dropped down the search-history file. The terms were Pot Plants, Hollyoaks, Mascara, Body Toning, Crystals. Nothing very interesting. He opened her video folder and chose one at random.

  The clip opened in a field. It was some time in the summer because the grass was green, the trees thick with leaves. A tall, heavy woman in a calf-length black dress stood in the middle distance. Her arms were stretched out, trying to catch the legs of a slight girl in pink shorts who was hopping around throwing wobbly handstands. The woman was laughing. She had very short auburn hair. Her face was ruddy, heavy-boned. It was a jump to link her to the blackened pile on the table in the mortuary.

  ‘I filmed that one.’ Mahoney came to stand behind him. ‘That was three summers ago. The year Daisy decided Nastia Liukin had competition.’

  ‘Daisy? Your daughter?’

  ‘She’s staying with my mum. Broken-hearted, of course.’

  Daisy threw another handstand. This time Lucy caught her legs. There was a long, precarious moment while Daisy tried to hold the position. Then her arms buckled. Lucy tried to maintain it but Daisy rolled on to the ground and lay on her back, her hands on her stomach, giggling. The camera zoomed in on Lucy. She was laughing too, but when she saw she was being filmed, the smile fad
ed. ‘Oh, no!’ She shook her head and held up a hand to block the camera’s view. ‘Don’t. Please. You’re making me blush now. Leave me alone.’

  The camera swung away. There were a few frames of a lawn and the fumbling noise of the camera being switched off. The screen went blank.

  ‘“Don’t make me blush.”’ Mahoney went back and sat on the sofa. ‘Yes. That was Lucy all over. Everything embarrassed her.’

  ‘She loved Daisy.’

  ‘Everyone loves Daisy.’

  Caffery opened another file. This one was dated just three months ago. It showed a small room, dull daylight coming through the window. A woman was standing side on to the camera, looking at an easel with a canvas on it. Lucy. Her red hair straggled down her back – it was much longer – and her clothes were different, colourful. She wore a red waistcoat over a sapphire blue shirt with a flowered bandanna tied in a knot at the front of her head. She was holding a paintbrush in one hand; the other fiddled with the shirt. She was thinner here. Much thinner. In three years she’d developed a waistline.

  ‘Who shot this one?’

  ‘I don’t know. A friend, maybe. I wasn’t there.’

  The camera came in close. Lucy turned and looked steadily at the lens. She didn’t blush. She didn’t try to turn away. She smiled ironically, held up the paintbrush and spoke in a mock-French accent: ‘Welcome to my atelier, little one. This is where the magic is made.’

  The video stopped and for a moment the room was silent. Caffery tapped his finger on the mouse pad. This is where the magic is made. Something was here, in this video. Something important. He played it again, looking carefully at her face, at the way her hand fiddled with the shirt, self-consciously touching her stomach. This is where the magic is made. What are you trying to tell me, Lucy? What are you trying to say?

  A noise behind him made him turn. Mahoney was sitting forward, peering at the table. ‘That’s odd,’ he murmured. ‘That’s very odd.’

  Caffery pushed back the chair. ‘What is?’

  ‘Those.’

  He looked to where Mahoney pointed and saw nothing out of the ordinary: just the search forms, the paperweight and Lucy’s door keys where he’d left them earlier.

  ‘Her keys? I booked them out from the station at Wells.’

  Mahoney leant over. Picked them up. ‘Was this how you found them?’

  ‘They were in her pocket. Yes.’

  ‘Just these two. The Chubb and the Yale?’

  ‘They fit the front door.’

  ‘But one’s missing. There should be a back-door key. Usually it’s up there, on that nail.’

  Caffery turned. The nail was empty. He glanced at the front door, then the back door. For a moment he felt a small chill. As if something had just come into the room and settled down with them.

  ‘And . . .’ He gave a small cough. ‘And I take it you haven’t got it?’

  Mahoney turned his eyes to him. The pupils had shrunk to pinpoints. ‘No. And if you haven’t got it,’ he said, ‘then who the hell has?’

  31

  The residential roads around Hanham were quiet at lunchtime, and as Flea came round the corner she saw Thom’s black Escort pull away from the kerb. It raced to the end of the road, indicators flashing. Hitting the T-junction, it turned right. She kept close behind it, fumbling on the front seat for her phone.

  Mandy was driving, of course. She would be. Flea knew what the guys in the unit would say about Mandy. It’d be: ‘Well, there goes a girl with a nine-inch clit.’ Or words to that effect. The Escort stopped at traffic-lights, and Flea pulled in behind it, jabbing out Thom’s number with her thumb. Up ahead she saw Mandy turn her face and watch Thom rummage in his coat pockets. He said something to her as he got the phone out, but in Flea’s ear the call was bumped to answerphone and she saw him lean sideways to return it to his pocket. He rested his forehead against the side window and stared out.

  Flea floored the Clio, leaning on the horn, flashing the lights. Mandy raised her chin: a glimpse of startled eyes in the rear-view mirror. Flea put her hand out of the window, gesturing for the car to pull over.

  There was a moment’s hiatus while the two cars rolled along the road almost bumper to bumper, Mandy taking time to register what was happening. Then the entrance to a cemetery came up and the Escort jerked left into it and stopped just inside the gates. Flea slammed the Clio in behind, jumped out and went fast to the driver’s side, making a circular motion with her fingers telling Mandy to roll down the window.

  But for a moment, her white face just stared back through the glass. On the passenger side Thom had slid down until his chin was almost on his chest. His face was canted over, resting on his splayed hand so no one could see his expression.

  ‘Open the window.’

  Mandy did. ‘You frightened the life out of me. What’s going on?’

  ‘We need to talk.’

  ‘I’m on my way to work.’

  ‘Now, Mandy. Now.’

  ‘Riiiiight,’ she said cautiously. ‘You’re upset.’

  ‘Get out of the car.’

  She did as she was told: slowly, hands raised, as if Flea had a gun to her head.

  Thom unbuckled and got out, too, his face appearing on the other side of the car roof. He was flustered. ‘Flea, there’s no need for this. I’m going to tell her.’

  ‘Going to tell me what?’

  ‘Mandy, don’t listen to her. Please. I swear I was just about to tell you.’

  Flea held up her hand. ‘Get back in the car, Thom.’

  ‘Let me tell her.’

  ‘Get in the car.’

  He stared at his sister, his hands on the roof, his face drained of colour now. A vein in the side of his neck pulsed blue.

  ‘Do what she’s telling you,’ Mandy said. ‘Go on – sit down.’

  Thom might have been able to ignore his sister, but he didn’t know how to defy his girlfriend. He got into the car and sat, slouched in the seat. Mandy turned to Flea, her arms folded under her huge breasts. ‘What on earth’s going on?’

  ‘There’s been an accident. Thom’s had . . . an accident.’

  Mandy bent very slowly to look across the driver’s seat at Thom. His face was in his hands again. ‘He doesn’t look as if he’s had an accident.’

  ‘It wasn’t him who got hurt.’

  ‘Then who?’

  ‘It was a woman.’

  ‘A woman?’ Mandy raised her eyebrows questioningly, as if the idea of Thom having anything to do with a woman was preposterous. Even through an accident.

  ‘He was driving. The other night. He was drunk and she stepped out in front of him. He didn’t have a chance to stop.’

  ‘What happened to her?’

  Flea shook her head. No way of sugar-coating it. ‘I’m sorry.’

  Mandy closed her eyes very slowly. ‘Killed?’ She opened them, looked at Flea, unblinking. ‘You mean he killed her?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘When?’

  ‘Last Monday.’

  ‘The night he came over to you?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘He can’t have had an accident. He stayed at yours all evening. The car’s fine.’

  ‘He didn’t stay at mine. He was lying to you. He didn’t want you to know he was going to a business meeting because he didn’t want you thinking he was getting into another cock-up deal, so he came to mine and used my car – he left his outside in case you drove by to check up on him.’

  Mandy turned away and gazed distantly at the graves, at the plastic containers under the standpipe, the silk flowers made grey by the car fumes from the road. Seeing them but not absorbing them. ‘I can’t believe this. No one told me anything about it.’

  ‘Because no one knew. It wasn’t reported.’

  ‘Not reported? Then what happened to . . .’ This new dimension hit home with a bang. She put her elbows on the car roof and dropped her face into her hands. ‘My God. My God. My God.’

  ‘There’s
something we can do.’

  ‘This will be the end of everything.’

  ‘Mandy, calm down. Thom and I have talked about it and there is something we can do. We’ve got to get him into hospital. We’ve got to build a case. There isn’t much time.’

  ‘Build a case? You mean you’re going to lie? Why? Why would you do that?’

  ‘Because he’s my brother. Because I’m totally fucking furious with him and I’d like to pull his eyes out right now. But he’s still my brother and I love him.’

  Mandy rested her finger against her throat as if there was a small lump there. Then she pulled back her sleeve and checked her watch – as if knowing the time would somehow keep everything in place and stop the world tilting. In the distance thunder rolled. A bird – a rook, maybe – took off from the line of pencil cypresses edging the cemetery. ‘We need some time to think about this,’ she said eventually.

  ‘OK.’

  ‘Alone, I mean.’

  ‘I’ll go and sit in the car.’

  ‘No. Longer than that. We need to go home and think about it. Sleep on it. I’ll call you.’

  ‘When?’

  ‘Tomorrow morning. Maybe in the afternoon. I’ve got to work in the morning.’

  ‘It can’t wait that long. Things are . . . changing. Things with the body are changing.’

  ‘Things with the . . . ? Christ.’ Mandy shook her head. ‘Oh, Christ.’

  ‘Call me first thing in the morning.’

  ‘Some time in the morning.’

  ‘If I haven’t heard by midday I’ll be at your front door. And if we don’t start doing something about it then, I’m going to have to—’

  ‘Going to have to what?’

  ‘Midday. I’ll see you at midday.’

  32

  Four o’clock in the afternoon, and Ruth feels good. A drink in her hand and the music’s on loud. She’d like to open all the windows so the neighbours know she’s here. Because their little trick today – sending that slag to spy on her – hasn’t got to her. Not at all. In fact, it’s made things even clearer. If before she wasn’t sure of the changes she’s decided to make, she’s a thousand per cent now. It’s time to get out of here. Time to go back to where she belongs. To the sun. Her and the cats and maybe Stevie, somewhere better than this shit-hole.