Skin

by Mo Hayder

  ‘No, they couldn’t. I’ve changed the lock. I did it myself, this morning.’

  For starters came Haloumi bread, warm and shiny with oil, lumps of cheese and caraway seeds pressing up through the crust like tiny black veins. The men ate, looking out at the suspension bridge. The sun glinted on the chocolaty river below.

  ‘I spent the night reading the witness statements from when she was a misper,’ Caffery said. ‘Talk to me a bit more about how it happened. She went missing at five thirty on the Sunday?’

  ‘That was the last time I saw her.’

  ‘And you called the police on the Monday?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘That was nearly twenty-four hours later. Why did you wait?’

  ‘I didn’t think it was appropriate. Until she didn’t turn up to get Daisy from school.’

  ‘Appropriate? But she was missing.’

  ‘I didn’t know she was. Not at that point. She just wasn’t answering my calls. If she chooses to stay out all night it’s not my business any more.’

  ‘How long have you been divorced?’

  ‘A year. Separated two.’

  ‘You were still close?’

  ‘Not at first. Daisy came with me to my mother’s, that was agreed right from the start, and at the beginning Lucy’d wait until I was at work to visit her. I didn’t see her for a year – we managed to avoid each other. Then things mellowed a bit, around the time the divorce was finalized. We settled some old arguments, started talking again, for Daisy’s sake. Lucy had changed in that time. You saw that, didn’t you, in the video?’

  ‘Why did you separate in the first place? What were the circumstances?’

  ‘I left. We’d run out of things to enjoy together. We were growing apart.’

  ‘Growing apart – that sounds like the sort of excuse people come up with for something else.’

  Mahoney smiled nervously. ‘I don’t know, but the way you’re speaking to me here, it sounds as if I’m on trial.’

  ‘No. I’m just trying to get a picture. Something you tell me might have the key to all this. Even if you don’t realize it. Did Lucy have a boyfriend? She was an attractive woman.’

  Mahoney folded a napkin on to his lap. The rest of the meal was already on its way, but he picked up the menu and studied it anyway.

  ‘Colin? I asked if Lucy had a boyfriend.’

  He coughed. ‘I’m wondering if I should have chosen the roast-pork sandwich instead. Wednesdays, in the summer, they do a hog roast here on the street for people coming out of the office. Whole pig on a spit. Hand it out in napkins. Nice with Somerset apple sauce.’

  Caffery sat back in his seat and watched him. He thought again about his mother, wondering what she looked like now, wondering if she was in pain, if now the pain was physical, from joints getting tired of rubbing together, from muscles aching with hard work, or if there was still pain from losing Ewan. He wondered if time had changed the pain – mutated or softened it. ‘Colin? You left her. Why’s this difficult for you?’

  ‘Does it matter why?’

  ‘I’m trying to pull with you, mate, not against. Did she have a boyfriend?’

  Mahoney rubbed his eyes and put down the menu. ‘You should know the answer to that. It’ll be in those statements her friends made.’

  ‘I want to hear it from you.’

  ‘Yes. She had a boyfriend. OK?’

  ‘A name?’

  ‘No. And her friends didn’t give you one. They don’t know either, do they?’

  ‘Weird . . . that she didn’t tell her friends her boyfriend’s name.’

  ‘Not that weird. She was the most private person I knew. And she was protecting him. He was married.’

  ‘Well, that’s interesting.’

  ‘Not really. They were sort of . . . lukewarm together. She liked him but there was nothing serious. Oh, don’t worry, I’ve thought about it, whether or not he had something to do with her . . . You know.’

  ‘And?’

  He shook his head. ‘No. Doesn’t seem right. She didn’t feel threatened by him.’

  ‘He’s still interesting to me.’

  ‘I can think of something that’s more interesting.’

  Caffery raised an eyebrow.

  ‘The money.’

  ‘The money?’ Caffery sat forward. ‘Well, you’ve got me by the goolies with that. Go on.’

  Mahoney didn’t smile. ‘When we split up I gave Lucy some money, not a lot, just enough for a deposit on the house and a bit extra. She used to work for a company in Filton that made Christmas decorations. Designed bits and pieces for them, worked in the office, that sort of thing. But one day she announced she was giving it up. I didn’t give it much thought at the time but, with hindsight, her lifestyle didn’t change even when she stopped working. She still went shopping every weekend and came home loaded with things – oddments, paperweights. A proper pack rat. Well, you saw her house.’

  ‘A loan, maybe?’

  ‘Against what? Property prices didn’t go up much in that area and she had a ninety per cent mortgage anyway. But she went on four holidays last year.’

  ‘Did he pay for them? The boyfriend?’

  ‘No. He didn’t contribute, and that’s from the horse’s mouth. His wife would find out if he did. And he didn’t go abroad with Lucy. She was either on her own – I should know, I took her to the airport – or with Daisy. And then . . .’ Mahoney reached into his inside pocket and took out a folded piece of paper, pushed it across the table ‘. . . there’s this. In the post this morning.’

  Caffery opened it. It was property particulars from an estate agent: a stone cottage with white-painted windows and a clematis climbing over the doorway. ‘Everything but the white picket fence.’

  ‘Look at the price on it,’ Mahoney said.

  ‘Six hundred K.’

  ‘The maisonette is worth almost two hundred now. But there was a hundred-and-forty-thousand-pound mortgage on it.’

  Caffery turned the letter over to look at the back. Nothing.

  ‘Goland and Bulley.’ Mahoney nodded towards the window. ‘That’s them. Other side of the road. What do you think?’

  ‘I think . . .’ Caffery put down the letter and signalled for the waitress ‘. . . I think we’ll take those sandwiches to go.’

  36

  The girl in the estate agent’s was a bit like Keelie. Or, rather, a bit the way Keelie might have looked if she hadn’t, at some point in her teenage years, stumbled on the delights of crack cocaine. This girl had powerful swimmer’s shoulders and her body seemed too tanned and muscular for the navy suit she’d squeezed it into.

  ‘Mrs Mahoney?’ She typed in the reference number from the letter. ‘Obviously I can’t tell you very much about our correspondence. It’s confidential. But I can tell you whether she’s a client.’

  Caffery put his warrant card on the table.

  She peered at it. ‘Police?’

  ‘Police.’

  A nervous laugh. And then, in the knee-jerk way honest people often did, suddenly she was spilling out facts like water. ‘Yes, well, I do remember her, of course. She was wanting something in the region of, uh, five to eight hundred. There’s a property to sell – we’re due to value it on, um . . .’ she searched the screen ‘. . . tomorrow.’

  ‘You may as well cancel that.’

  ‘I see.’

  Caffery was sure she didn’t. Didn’t see at all.

  ‘Well, if I . . .’ She turned the computer screen to face him. ‘Is there anything here that could help you?’

  The two men leant closer. The screen was filled with email correspondence. Nothing out of the ordinary: Lucy’s requests for information on property. The agent’s replies.

  ‘What’s the date on that one?’

  ‘Last Sunday.’

  It was the day Lucy had gone missing. She’d been arranging house viewings on the day she was planning to kill herself?

  ‘Are we the first to visit? No other
calls from the police about Ms Mahoney?’

  ‘Not that I know of.’

  ‘They wouldn’t have come here,’ Mahoney’s voice was subdued, ‘because none of these were in her mailbox. I should know. I spent hours going through her emails. She must have deleted them.’

  Caffery didn’t answer. He was thinking about the search history on Lucy’s computer. Hollyoaks. Pot Plants. Body Toning. Now he thought about it, those searches had never fitted with his impression of Lucy. They sounded more like the sort you’d invent for a woman you didn’t know much about. To disguise the fact that the cache had been emptied.

  And then it came to him. An idea, hard and complete, the way ideas often did. The suicide note Lucy had been found with hadn’t been handwritten. It had come from a computer. It hadn’t occurred to anyone to wonder why it wasn’t on her computer at home.

  ‘Come on.’ Caffery pushed back his chair and got to his feet. ‘Let’s have another look at Lucy’s computer.’

  37

  Mandy called Flea at midday on the dot. She and Thom had had a long talk. They were calmer now. They’d meet her in Keynsham tonight after work to discuss the ‘way forward’.

  ‘Where are you now?’ she wanted to know. ‘You sound distant.’

  ‘I’m outside the district-council offices.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘Trowbridge.’

  ‘What are you doing there?’

  ‘Something important. Someone we need to think about. I’ll explain later.’

  It didn’t take Flea long to find the department she wanted: down a prefab corridor with dirty windows and a fireproof carpet underfoot. The head of the department was harried, careless: he didn’t namby around asking for warrants – a flash of her card was enough as he took her down to the desk where he thought Ruth Lindermilk’s correspondence would be held.

  The clerk dealing with it was a bubbly blonde, in her fifties with an out-of-season lamp tan and lots of gold jewellery, busily working her way through letters that overflowed from three plastic letter trays. ‘We call this CYA corner,’ she told Flea. ‘I work on CYA corner – great, isn’t it?’

  ‘CYA?’

  ‘Cover Your Arse. I get all the stuff the other departments want to put in the bin. You know, old ladies complaining the local post office is closing and how the council really wants to deal with the UFOs over Salisbury Plain.’ She indicated a pile. ‘I’ve sent answers to these already. Don’t expect to hear back but I’ve got to file them, keep them for a while just in case.’ She pulled one of the baskets towards her. ‘You said this letter was sent last week?’

  ‘I think so, yes.’

  ‘And the name?’

  ‘Ruth Lindermilk.’

  A small smile twitched at the corner of the secretary’s mouth. ‘Lindermilk?’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘I know that name. It’s distinctive.’ She took two stacks of letters in rubber bands and put them to one side. She flicked through the next pile and came up very quickly with a letter on council headed paper, stapled to a piece of flowered notepaper. ‘This covering one is the reply we send them all. Just standard, you know, “we’re dealing with your complaint”. Yacketyyackety.’ She folded the reply letter to the back, ironing it flat with her palms, and scanned the notepaper underneath. ‘Yes, this is her. Ruth the snitch, I call her, because she’s always trying to get these motorists into trouble.’ She passed Flea the letter. ‘Obsessed with wildlife – feeds the hedgehogs and the badgers, and if someone hits so much as a wood louse on the road Ruth the snitch is on to it. Thinks we should be doing something about every frog, mouse and worm that gets squished.’

  Flea took the letter and sat on the low plastic bucket chair. The letter was handwritten, bordered with roses and sparrows. It was dated 18 May. The morning after Misty was killed.

  To whom it may concern.

  Since my last communication to you of 3 January I haven’t heard hide nor hair from you and I’ve now got four more incidents to report. It seems to me like absolutely nothing is being done. One of these last night is a really serious incident where a deer got hit. You will ignore me at your peril.

  Date Time Incident Car make and plate Other comments

  15 January 22.06 Badger got hit. Crawled to edge with broken pelvis. Lated died there in pain. Black or blue Vauxhall Did not stop.

  22 January 12.00 noon Rabbit got hit and killed. Silver Land Rover NO7 XWT DRIVER WAS AWARE!!! (Stopped and stared at dead rabbit so knows EXACTLY what he did)

  3 March 19.45 Badger got hit. Killed instantly. Not sure of make Dark car. First letters of number plate S58. Driver did not bother to stop.

  17 May 23.11 Deer(?) got hit. Or large animal. Crawled away Driver was AWARE!!! Silver Ford Focus. Last letters of number plate GBR Driver was aware.

  As I’ve said on numerous times, I am of the opinion that all of these drivers should be brought in and really hit where it hurts. If these were human casualties you would of solved them no doubt a long time ago. They would be called hit-and-run and the police would be involved. I’ve got evidence I can produce in court if you can get it that far.

  Once again, I call for you to chase these wrongdoers and hit them where it hurts. IT IS ONLY A MATTER OF TIME BEFORE ANOTHER OF MY CATS IS KILLED. This worry is causing me sleepless nights and has shortened my life. You can be sued for that too.

  Ruth Lindermilk

  The secretary had got up from her seat and was bending over a filing cabinet, pulling out sheets of paper from a low drawer. Flea watched her, seeing her but not really seeing her. May 17. Ten past eleven. A silver Ford Focus with the last letters GBR. A ‘deer’ hit on the road at the bottom of the hamlet.

  ‘Here are the others.’ The secretary came back to the desk and dumped the letters next to the piles from the in-tray. ‘These are all from Ruth Lindermilk.’

  Flea pushed them around with her fingers, looking at dates going back to 2001. They were written in the same feverish hand, tabulated with the same columns in which Ruth had carefully entered dates, times, licence plates.

  ‘Been sending us letters for years. She’s obsessive.’ Flea stacked the old letters up and pushed them towards the secretary. ‘You’re right. She’s mad as a box of frogs. Obviously.’

  The secretary took them back to the filing cabinet and dropped them into their slots. Flea folded Ruth’s May letter and slid it into the back pocket of her jeans before the secretary noticed. From the in-tray piles on the desk, she pulled out another letter at random and folded the council’s reply back over it, to conceal that it wasn’t Ruth’s letter. She held this letter up and got the woman’s attention.

  ‘Thank you for this.’ She pushed it carefully back to the bottom of the pile, where it would take the secretary a few days to deal with. ‘You’ve been very helpful.’

  38

  In the maisonette Caffery peered up the silent stairwell. ‘Don’t suppose you’ve got that key on you? To the studio?’

  ‘I wasn’t expecting this visit. Give me some notice next time.’

  They went into the living room. Caffery put on gloves, switched on the computer and got into the cache folders, where all the cookies should be stored. There were just ten. For a while he sat at the desk, face close to the blank white space where the files should be. The recycling bin was empty too. Sometimes what is missing is the most crucial evidence of all, a CID trainer had once told him. Sometimes it’s not what you see but what you don’t see.

  In the kitchen Mahoney put the sandwiches they’d bought in the pub on to a plate and brought it through. He stuck it on the table and stood behind Caffery, his eyes on the screen. Caffery knew he should wait. He should pass the PC to the hi-tech unit at Portishead, but he wanted this now. He scrolled around the free data-recovery sites and chose a shareware programme – Restoration – downloading it from a fast European site.

  ‘What’re you doing?’

  ‘Unless someone ran a wipe utility, like Killdisc, the files’ll still be
on the hard drive somewhere. As long as no one’s wiped the partitions, and as long as a system file hasn’t been allocated over those spaces, it should all still be here.’

  They ate the sandwiches and waited for the download to finish. Then Caffery hit ‘set up’ and watched the programme unpack itself. He chose C drive to search, ticked ‘include used clusters by other files’, configured it to display the date the file was created, and set it in motion. The numbers in the ‘files found’ box spun round dizzyingly. In seconds the window had filled with folders, files of every extension, doc, xls, ppt. Near the top of the list a Word file had been created on 6 May, 9.30 p.m. Last Sunday. The day she’d gone missing. Titled ‘Goodbye’.

  Caffery opened it and let all his breath out at once. The suicide note. He’d read it several times already at Wells and there wasn’t anything unusual in it: the same depressing stuff he’d seen too many times – too much pain to go on, life not worth living, no one who understands. Others killed themselves out of cowardice, or from the strain of living with the knowledge of what they’d done. People like Penderecki. But he’d never known anyone write a suicide note, print and delete it.

  ‘She didn’t write that,’ Mahoney said. ‘No way she wrote it. That’s not Lucy’s language.’

  ‘Someone else did, though. Wrote it and wiped it. If it had been on here, the search adviser would have found it.’

  He scrolled through the list. ‘There are emails to the estate agent, all deleted, but he’s left others on the desktop. He’s only hiding specific things.’

  Mahoney pointed to a folder halfway down the list. ‘Is that something?’

  ‘NatWest statements.’ Caffery restored it to its original location and opened it. It contained twenty-four jpegs, each titled by a month in the last two years. He opened one from January two years back. It was a scanned image of a bank statement. He gave a low whistle. ‘The missing statements.’

  ‘She was scanning them into the computer? To save space?’

  ‘Looks like it.’