Beneath the Skin

by Nicci French

  We didn't talk much on the way there, up the M4 then along small lanes. I gave him curt instructions, and he drove and looked across at me with his heavy gaze. I sat with my hands on my lap and tried to look out my window, but I could feel his head turning toward me, his brooding stare.

  “What do your parents do?” he asked, just before we arrived.

  “Dad was a teacher, geography, but he took early retirement. Mum did odd things, but mostly she stayed at home and looked after me and my brother. Right here, at the T-junction. You're not coming in, remember.”

  The house was a thirties semi, much like all the others along the cul-de-sac. Cameron drew up outside it.

  “Hold on one minute,” he said as I reached for the door handle. “There's something I ought to tell you.”

  “What?”

  “There was another letter.”

  I lay back in the car seat and closed my eyes.

  “Oh God,” I said.

  “You made me promise to tell you everything.”

  “What did it say?”

  “It was short. It just said, ‘You're being brave, but it won't do you any good.' Something like that.”

  “And that was all?” I opened my eyes and turned my head to look at him. “When was it sent?”

  “Four days ago.”

  “Have you got anything from the note?”

  “We're using it to augment our psychological evaluation.”

  “Nothing,” I said with a sigh. “Well, I guess it doesn't really change much. We knew he was still out there, didn't we?”

  “Yes, we did.”

  “I'll see you in a couple of hours.”

  “Nadia.”

  “What?”

  “You are being brave.” I stared at him. “It's true,” he said.

  I looked at him.

  “You mean brave like Zoe and Jenny?”

  He didn't reply.

  Mum had made a neck of lamb stew, with rice—overcooked so it stuck together in lumps—and a green salad. I used to love lamb stew when I was a girl. How do you ever tell your mother you've gone off something? It was hard to eat, gristly and with too many sharp splinters of bones. Dad opened a bottle of red wine, although neither of them ever drink at lunchtime. They were so pleased to see me. They fussed over me, as if I were a stranger. I felt like a stranger with these two nice old people, who weren't really old yet.

  Always cautious, making their way through life in a gingerly fashion. They were careful with me, as well, waiting up for me every time I went out in the evenings, putting a hot-water bottle in my bed on cold nights, telling me to put on an extra layer when it was cold, sharpening my crayons for me before the beginning of each new school term. It used to drive me insane, their care, the way they thought about every detail of my life. Now the memory made me feel intensely nostalgic: a lump of homesickness beneath my ribs.

  I thought I would wait until after lunch to tell them. We drank coffee in the living room, with mint chocolates. I could see Cameron sitting at the wheel of his car. I cleared my throat.

  “I've got something to tell you,” I said.

  “Yes?”

  Mum looked at me expectantly, apprehensively.

  “I . . . there's a man who—” I stopped and looked at the pleasure flowering on her face. She thought I had a serious boyfriend at last; she had never thought much of Max as a long-term possibility. I couldn't make the words come out of my mouth. “Oh, it's nothing really.”

  “No, go on. Tell us. We want to hear, don't we, Tony?”

  “Later,” I said, standing up abruptly. “First I want Dad to show me what's going on in the garden.”

  The plums were ripening on the tree, and he was growing runner beans, lettuce, and potatoes. There were tomato plants in his greenhouse, and he insisted on giving me a plastic tray of cherry tomatoes to take back with me.

  “Your mother's got some jars of strawberry jam she has set by for you,” he said.

  I took hold of his arm.

  “Dad,” I said. “Dad, I know we've had our disagreements”—homework, cigarettes, drink, makeup, staying out late, politics, drugs, boyfriends, lack of boyfriends, serious jobs, you name it—“but I just wanted to say that you've been a good father.”

  He made an embarrassed tutting sound in the back of his throat and patted my shoulder.

  “Your mother will be wondering what's keeping us.”

  I said good-bye in the hall. I couldn't hug them properly because I was holding the tomatoes and the jam. I pressed my cheek against Mum's and breathed in the familiar smell of vanilla, powder, soap, and mothballs. Smell of my childhood.

  “Good-bye,” I said, and they smiled and waved. “Good-bye.”

  For just one moment, I let myself think I would never see them again, but you can't be like that; you can't walk down the path and get into the car and smile and keep on going if you let yourself be like that.

  All the way home, I pretended to sleep. I told Stadler that he should stay in his car after he had done his check round the flat. I wanted to be alone for a while. He started to protest, but the pager strapped to the belt of his trousers bleeped, and I slammed the door in his face.

  I sat on the edge of my bed with my hands on my knees. I closed my eyes and then opened them again. I listened to myself breathing. I waited, not for anything to happen but for this feeling to go away.

  Then the telephone rang, as if it was ringing inside my skull. I reached out a hand, picked it up.

  “Nadia.” Morris's voice was hoarse and urgent.

  “Yes?”

  “It's me. Don't say anything. Listen, Nadia. I've found something out. I can't tell you over the phone. We've got to meet.”

  I felt the fear growing in my stomach, a great tumor of fear.

  “What is it?”

  “Come to my flat, as soon as you can. There's something you've got to see. Is anyone with you?”

  “No. They're outside.”

  “Who is it?”

  “Stadler.”

  I heard the intake of Morris's breath. When he spoke again, he was very calm and slow.

  “Get away from him, Nadia. I'm waiting for you.”

  I put down the phone and stood up, balanced on the balls of my feet. So it was Cameron, after all. My fear ebbed away, and I was left feeling strong, springy, and full of clarity. It had come at last. The waiting was over, and with it all the grief and all the dread. And I was ready and it was time to go.

  TWENTY-ONE

  As I walked through my front door my head felt very clear. I knew what I was going to do. Matters had become simple for the moment. The layer of fear was still there, but even that had receded a little. Cameron was out of his car and beside me in a second, looking questioning, hopeful even.

  “I'm going up the road to get some food for supper,” I said.

  We walked along together. I didn't speak.

  “I'm sorry,” he said finally. “For everything. I just want to make it all right. For you and me. Us.”

  “What are you talking about?” I said.

  He didn't reply. We walked across High Street and along the pavement until we were standing outside Marks & Spencer. We mustn't have an argument, nothing to arouse his suspicions. I put my hand on his forearm. Contact but nothing excessive.

  “I'm sorry,” I said. “I'm not dealing with things in a rational way at the moment. It's not the time.”

  “I understand,” he said.

  I turned to go into the shop. I gave a sigh. “I'll be out in a minute.”

  “I'll wait here.”

  “Can I get you anything?”

  “Don't worry.”

  The Camden Town Marks & Spencer has a small back entrance. Up the escalator and out, and within a few minutes I was on an underground train. Going down the escalator to the platform, the warm air blowing past me, I had looked back. He was definitely not there.

  As I sat on the train for the short journey, I tried to make sense of what Morris had said
. I felt as if I had been trapped for weeks in a thick mist and now it was not exactly lifting, but it was becoming thinner and some sort of landscape was starting to become visible. If it had been a policeman, if it had been Cameron, suddenly what had seemed impossible became simple. The police had easy unquestioned access to Zoe's flat, to Jenny's house. My heart sank. To my flat. But why would they do that? Why would Cameron do that?

  I only had to think of Cameron's gaze and I knew the answer. I remembered my first meetings with the police, Cameron in the corner, his eyes fixed on me. Cameron in my bed. I had never been looked at like that before, never touched like that, as if I were an infinitely attractive and strange object. I'd felt he wanted to look at me and touch me and penetrate me and taste me all at the same time, as if nothing could ever be enough. It had been wonderfully exciting at first and then repellent, and now it seemed appallingly understandable. To be right next to the woman you were terrifying, to fuck her, to find out all her secrets. What a turn-on. And yet, what evidence was there? Had Morris found something I could use?

  Morris's flat was only a few minutes' walk from the tube station. The main road itself was packed with crowds of people. He lived in a small alley that was difficult to find. I walked past it the first time, then asked and found it and walked along and round the corner. The tiny cobbled backstreet was deserted on this Saturday evening. At the end I found a door with a little card by the bell: BURNSIDE. I rang the bell. There was silence for a time.

  Could he have gone out? Then I heard a series of knobs being turned, levers pulled, and he opened the door. He looked amazing, a live wire. He was wearing bulky trousers with large pockets all over and a short-sleeved shirt. He was barefoot. But there was something about his eyes, bright and alive, that was captivating. He had an energy about him that was like a force field. He was an attractive man, and what was more—here my heart sank a little—he was a man who fancied himself in love. I hoped he hadn't made a mountain out of a molehill, just in the hope of wooing me.

  “Nadia,” he said with a welcoming smile.

  He stood in the doorway and looked over my shoulder. I turned and looked as well. There was nobody there at all, the whole length of the street.

  “How did you get away?” he said.

  “I'm a magician,” I said.

  “Come in,” he said. “I haven't tidied up.”

  It looked very tidy to me. We had stepped straight into a small and cozy living room with a doorway at the far end leading into a short corridor.

  “Was this a warehouse?”

  “Some kind of workshop, I think. I'm just flat-sitting for a friend who's out of the country.”

  The only thing out of place was an ironing board and iron to one side by the table.

  “You've been doing your ironing,” I said. “I'm extremely impressed.”

  “Just this shirt,” he said.

  “I thought it was new.”

  “That's the trick,” he said. “If you iron your clothes, they look like new.”

  I smiled.

  “The real trick is to wear new clothes,” I said.

  I walked around the room. I was addicted to looking at other people's houses. I gravitated with the instinct of a master snooper to a large cork board on the wall on which, here and there, were pinned takeaway menus, business cards of plumbers and electricians, and, most interesting of all, little snapshots. Morris at a party, Morris on a bike somewhere, Morris on a beach, Morris and a girl.

  “She looks nice,” I said.

  “Cath,” he said.

  “Is she someone you're seeing?”

  “Well, we had a sort of thing.”

  I smiled inwardly. She was someone he was seeing. When men said of a girl that they had had a sort of thing with her, it was the equivalent of a man taping over his wedding ring. They wanted to be ambiguous about their state of availability.

  “Where are the rest of them?”

  “What?”

  “The pictures,” I said. “Many drawing pins, few pictures.” I pointed. There were gaps all over the board.

  “Oh,” he said. “There were just some I got bored with.” He laughed. “You should have been a detective.”

  “Speaking of which, this had better be good, because Detective Inspector Stadler is going to be very angry. I'll probably be lucky if I get away with a charge of wasting police time.”

  Morris gestured me to a chair at the table and he sat opposite me. “I've been going over the interview I had with Stadler and—what was the other one?”

  “Links?”

  “That's right, and I'm convinced that there's something strange about Stadler. The way he talked about those other two women was really strange, and I wanted to go through it with you. And I just felt I had to get you away from him.”

  “Have you got any evidence?”

  “What?”

  “I thought you might have found something we could use against him.”

  “I'm sorry,” he said. “I wish I could have.”

  I tried to think. The mist in my mind that had been clearing suddenly became thicker again. Then suddenly I felt a wave of coldness pass through me.

  “It doesn't work anyway,” I said dully.

  Morris looked puzzled. “What doesn't?”

  “The police theory. I got so excited about Zoe and that watermelon and her connection with the police before the notes arrived. But that doesn't explain Jennifer.”

  “Why?”

  “Her locket was planted in Zoe's flat before Zoe died, before Jennifer started getting the notes, before she called the police.”

  “The police might have faked the planting of the locket.”

  I thought for a moment.

  “Well, maybe,” I said doubtfully. “Still, that doesn't explain the connection with Jenny. Why pick on her?”

  “Stadler may have seen her somewhere.”

  “You could say that about anybody. The police theory depended on the fact that they had dealings with all the women.”

  I felt depressed and sick. “It was all wrong,” I said. “I'd better go.”

  Morris leaned across and touched my arm. “Just stay a bit,” he said. “Just a bit, Nadia.”

  “It would have been so good,” I said flatly. “It was such a nice theory, it's a pity to let it go.”

  “Back to the haystack,” Morris said. He was smiling at me as if that was funny. His teeth, his eyes, his whole face, shone.

  “You know what?” I said dreamily.

  “What?”

  “I used to feel strange that I'd never met Zoe and Jenny. It's different now. Sometimes I think of us as sisters, but more and more I think of us as the same person. We've gone through the same experiences. We've lain awake at night with the same fears. And we're going to die in the same way.”

  Morris shook his head. “Nadia . . .”

  “Shhh,” I said, as if to a small child. I was almost talking to myself now and I didn't want my reverie interrupted. “When I went to the flat with Louise—that's Zoe's friend—it was amazing. It was almost as if she had already been my best friend, as if we recognized each other. It was so funny when she talked of going shopping with Zoe on that last afternoon; it was almost as if she had been talking of a shopping expedition that we had made together. She felt it too. I could tell.”

  And at that moment, quite suddenly, the fog lifted and the landscape was there—there it was—cold and hard in the sunshine and I could see it. There was no doubt. I had been going over the forensic file in my mind ever since I had seen it.

  “What is it?”

  I started. I had almost forgotten Morris was there. “What?” I said.

  “You don't seem quite here,” he said. “What were you thinking?”

  “I was thinking,” I said, “that when Zoe was killed she was wearing a shirt she had just bought with Louise. Funny, isn't it?”

  “I don't know,” said Morris. “Tell me why it's funny, Nadia. Tell me.”

  “Pity to me
ss it up,” I said.

  Morris gazed at me as if he was trying to see inside my mind. Did he think I was going a bit mad? Good. I leaned over the table and took his hand. It felt clammy. Mine felt cool and dry. I held his right hand between my two hands and squeezed it.

  “Morris,” I said. “I'd love some tea.”

  “Yes,” he said. “Yes, of course, Nadia.” He was smiling and smiling. He couldn't stop.

  He got up and walked out of the room. I looked across at the front door. There were several levers and knobs. Then fifty or sixty yards down the deserted road; no one about. I stood up and walked over to the cork notice board.

  “Can I help?” I shouted.

  “No,” he shouted from the kitchen.

  I looked at the notice board. Below it was a writing desk with drawers. As quietly as I could I opened the first. Checkbooks, receipts. I opened the second. Postcards. The third. Catalogs. The fourth. A pile of photographs. I picked up a couple. I knew roughly what I was going to see, but still I gave a shiver of horror. Morris and someone and someone and Fred. Morris and Cath and Fred. Morris and someone and Fred. I put one of them in the back pocket of my jeans. Maybe it would be found on my body. I closed the drawer and went and sat down at the table. I looked around. It would have to do. I cleared my mind. No, that's wrong. I didn't clear my mind; I filled it. I made myself think of the photograph of Jenny dead. I made myself think of every detail. What would Jenny do if she were sitting where I was sitting?

  Morris came in, somehow managing to hold a teapot, two mugs, a carton of milk, and a packet of digestive biscuits. He put them on the table and sat down.

  “Hang on a second,” I said, before he could pour. “I want to show you something.” I stood up and walked round the table. “It's a sort of magic trick.”

  He smiled at me once again. Such a nice smile. He looked happy, excited. The excitement was like a light behind his eyes.

  “I don't know very much about magic,” I said, “but the first thing you learn is you never tell your audience in advance what you are going to do. If it goes wrong, then you can pretend you did it on purpose. Look.” I took the lid off the teapot and then lifted the pot and then very quickly threw it into his face. Some of it splashed on me as well. I didn't even feel it. He let out a howl like an animal. In the same movement I reached for the iron. I took it in both hands. I had one chance and I had to do real damage. He was clutching his face. I lifted the iron up and then brought it down with all my weight on his right knee. There was a cracking crumbling sound and a further scream. He crumpled and slumped off the side of his chair. What else? I thought of the photograph. I felt white hot, glowing, like a poker. His left ankle was exposed. I brought the iron down again. More cracking. Another scream. I moved back but as I did so I felt a hand clutching my trousers. I raised the iron again but as I pulled back the grip fell away.