Someone Else's Skin

by Sarah Hilary

  Ed crouched at the side of her armchair. ‘The roof?’ he repeated.

  Mab groped for his hand and held it between hers. ‘She went up.’ She pointed his hand at the ceiling. ‘Through the roof.’

  Shelley made a scoffing sound. ‘Don’t be daft.’

  Mab faltered, gripping at Ed’s hand. ‘She did . . .’

  ‘Ayana went up on the roof. When? After lunch?’

  ‘He pulled her up.’ Mab tugged on Ed’s hand, demonstrating the action.

  Marnie’s throat fisted in fear. ‘Who pulled her up? Was it someone she knew?’

  ‘Someone new,’ she nodded, misunderstanding the question. ‘Not a face I’ve seen.’

  ‘Where?’ Ed asked. ‘Can you show us?’ He helped Mab to her feet.

  Shelley was scowling from the sofa. ‘This is mental. She’s seeing stuff.’

  On the floor, Tessa squirmed.

  Marnie followed Ed and Mab from the room, nodding for Noah to stay with the other two. Mab headed for the fire exit at the end of the corridor. Ed didn’t rush her, letting Mab lead the way. At the exit, she lifted his hand, still held between hers, and pointed at the ceiling tiles. ‘Through here . . .’

  Marnie fetched a chair from the nearest bedroom and climbed up to push at the ceiling tiles. They gave, easily. Cold air came in a rush from the hole in the roof, where the repair was half-done. The hole was large enough for a man to get through.

  She climbed back down. ‘Can you remember when this happened?’

  Mab nodded. ‘The afternoon play. Radio Four. I wanted to listen, so I used the loo before it started.’

  ‘Two fifteen,’ Ed said.

  ‘Yes.’ Mab beamed at him. ‘The Archers was over. I don’t like The Archers, always a fuss about who’s to blame for what’s gone wrong.’

  ‘You popped to the loo,’ Ed said, ‘and that’s when you saw Ayana being pulled up through here.’

  ‘Yes.’ Her smile dissolved into a look of distress. ‘I told Jeanette. I told the other girls, but they said I was making it up. Then I must’ve nodded off.’ She began to weep, silently.

  ‘It’s all right,’ Ed said. ‘Did the man come down into the refuge? Through here?’ He pointed at the ceiling tiles. ‘Can you describe him?’

  ‘Dark, like her.’ She fussed at the front of her cardigan. ‘Another Indian.’

  Marnie eyed the distance from the floor to the ceiling. It wasn’t possible for one man to lift a struggling girl through the gap in the tiles, not without help. Assuming she was struggling. ‘Just one man?’ she asked Mab.

  ‘Hands. More hands, through there.’ She pointed upwards. ‘Pulling her up.’ She looked at Ed, her bottom lip turning out. ‘Fireman’s lift. She was over his shoulder. Her hair was hanging down . . .’

  ‘Didn’t any of them see you?’ Marnie asked.

  She shook her head. ‘I stayed out of sight. I didn’t want any trouble.’

  ‘Did you hear them speaking?’

  ‘I don’t speak Indian.’

  ‘What about Ayana? Didn’t she call for help?’

  ‘She was being rescued. Firefighter’s lift. To safety.’ Mab looked up and down the corridor, her face creasing in confusion. ‘There must’ve been a fire. It’s out now. They put it out. She’ll come back, now it’s out.’ She turned to Ed. ‘Won’t she?’

  42

  ‘Mab told you what she saw. Why didn’t you report it?’

  Jeanette Conway crossed her arms defensively. ‘For real? It didn’t make any sense. I figured she was imagining it.’

  Marnie turned to the other two women. Shelley Coates shrugged. ‘She’s loopy, like my gran.’ She admired the polish on her toenails. ‘This one time, right? My gran tried to get the bus in the middle of the night, to go dancing. The police had to bring her back.’

  ‘So you didn’t believe her.’ Marnie turned to the other girl. ‘How about you, Tessa? I think you did believe her, didn’t you?’

  ‘Dunno.’ Tessa threw a look at Shelley, scared. ‘Maybe.’

  ‘You didn’t.’ Shelley kicked at a cushion on the sofa. ‘You’re not mental.’

  Ed had taken Mab to her room. Of the women remaining in the dayroom, Noah didn’t trust Shelley or Tessa. He trusted Jeanette least of all. Marnie was right: these were the worst witnesses imaginable.

  ‘What about Hope and Simone?’ Marnie asked.

  ‘What about them?’ Shelley slid her eyes to Noah. ‘This is getting on my tits. We come here for a bit of peace. I want the third fucking degree, I’ll go home to my Clark.’

  ‘Hope Proctor went missing from the hospital earlier today. With Simone.’

  Tessa looked miserable. Jeanette consulted her watch. A good watch, not cheap. Noah hadn’t noticed it before.

  Shelley rubbed a knuckle under her nose. ‘No way. For real?’

  ‘Yes.’ Marnie didn’t elaborate, waiting to see what the women would say.

  ‘So you reckon . . . what? They’re a couple of dykes?’ Shelley challenged Marnie with a stare. ‘No offence.’

  ‘Tessa?’ Marnie prompted.

  ‘What?’ Tessa sounded on the verge of tears.

  ‘Did you know Simone was planning to leave?’

  In a small voice, crushed by Shelley’s presence at her back, Tessa said, ‘She was in a weird mood last night.’

  Shelley opened her mouth to speak. Marnie shut her up with a look. ‘Simone was in a weird mood. In what way?’

  ‘Like she was excited about something. She was in Hope’s room. I heard her. It sounded like she was moving things around, and she cleared her stuff from the bathroom. I was waiting to have a shower. She was putting her shampoo in a carrier bag. I thought that was weird.’

  ‘Did you ask her what she was doing?’

  ‘No. I didn’t like to be nosy.’

  Shelley hefted her legs into a sitting position on the sofa. ‘I’m not being funny, but this is meant to be a place of safety, right? Only you’re saying like three of them are missing. Are you going to move us, or what?’

  ‘Not my decision.’

  ‘Ayana,’ Shelley said. ‘How’d her scumbag brothers know she was here?’

  ‘We don’t know.’

  The girl gave Marnie a shrewd look. ‘We were okay until you lot turned up. Then it all kicked off. Can’t blame us for not trusting you.’

  ‘Maybe not, but I can blame you for failing to report what Mab told you. And for giving this address to your boyfriend.’

  Shelley’s face turned fiery. ‘For real? No fucking way.’

  ‘You gave this address to your boyfriend, Clark. Are you denying that?’

  Jeanette made a scoffing sound, triumphant. She fingered her new, expensive earrings. Marnie turned to her. ‘You knew Clark was visiting the refuge, but you didn’t report it. I’m guessing you saw him in Shelley’s room, more than once. Why wasn’t that reported?’

  Jeanette glared at Shelley, who glared back.

  ‘You were paid,’ Marnie said, ‘to turn a blind eye. Paid quite a bit if the new jewellery’s anything to go by. How many times has that happened? With how many people?’

  Ed had come back into the room, quietly. He was standing by the door, looking dismayed at what he was hearing.

  Jeanette said, ‘I told you, they can’t help themselves. She,’ pointing a finger at Shelley, ‘can’t help herself. She’s like a bitch on heat.’

  Shelley surged up from the sofa, fingernails aiming for Jeanette’s face. Noah stepped between the two women, blocking Shelley’s attack with a raised forearm.

  ‘Sit down!’ Marnie snapped at Shelley.

  Shelley flung herself down on the sofa, her face knuckled with aggression. Tessa moved away, putting distance between herself and Shelley.

  Jeanette stood with her arms folded, trying to hang on to a look of triumph.

  ‘I’m guessing Mr Belloc has the paperwork relating to gross misconduct,’ Marnie told her. ‘I’m going to want a list of everyone you’ve allowed into this buil
ding, or out of it, during the time you’ve been doing your job. After that, I’ll decide whether or not to charge you with obstructing a police investigation.’

  She nodded at Tessa, more kindly. ‘You and I need to talk. In your room, please. DS Jake, if you could take a statement from Ms Coates regarding her movements in the last three weeks, that would be helpful.’

  Shelley started to speak, but Marnie cut her off with a stare that made her earlier one look like a smile. ‘For real.’

  43

  It was after 8 p.m. by the time they were ready to leave the refuge. Ed had called in a favour: a bright-eyed woman called Britt with big shoulders, colourful clothes and a no-nonsense smile. Mab was pleased to see her; she knew Britt from another refuge.

  ‘She’ll keep Shelley in line,’ Ed told Marnie and Noah. ‘And keep things ticking over until we can find someone to take Jeanette’s place.’ He stuck his hands in his pockets, the boyish gesture at odds with the terse set of his mouth. ‘We’ll need to get the roof covered over, make sure everything’s secure in that respect.’

  ‘I can help with that,’ Noah offered. ‘We’ve got a list of emergency repairers, back at the station.’

  ‘Thanks.’ Ed looked at Marnie. ‘Could I cadge a lift home?’

  She nodded, guessing that he asked not for his sake, but hers. She’d given up trying to disguise the fatigue in her face. ‘No problem. Noah, do you need me to drop you at the station?’

  Noah shook his head. ‘I’ll walk. Thanks.’

  They’d put out all the calls they could about Ayana’s disappearance. The rest would have to wait until the morning. ‘She has a phone,’ Noah said. ‘I gave her a top-up card for it. Maybe she’ll get the chance to use it.’

  ‘Maybe,’ Marnie said. She hated going home under circumstances like this, knowing a young woman was in danger. She knew she wouldn’t sleep.

  Ed’s living room was a controlled explosion of clothes, books and CDs. The mess made her feel better, insulated. Safe. Ed shoved a space clear on the sofa and she sat, putting her head back into the cushions. Her clothes smelt of Sommerville. When she shut her eyes, she saw Stephen lying on the bed, with his arm across his scratched face. Ed went into the small kitchen behind her, clicking on the kettle.

  She was going to tell him, she realised. About her visit this afternoon, about what had happened to Stephen. She’d thought she’d go home to her empty bed, but she wanted to talk about it. To Ed.

  He brought the coffee from the kitchen, setting two mugs on the low table between precarious towers of magazines and newsprint. One mug was yellow, with a smiley face motif. The other was a heat-reactive novelty mug: James Bond materialising from a black background, gun in fist.

  ‘Biscuits?’ he offered. ‘Or I could make toast.’

  ‘No. Thanks. This is good.’

  He sat next to her, leaving a gap between them, respecting her personal space.

  She cradled the mug in her hands, watching Bond emerge from the heat-sensitive ceramic. ‘I saw Stephen this afternoon. He’d asked for me. That’s what they said. Only when I turned up, he’d changed his mind.’ Not the most articulate statement she’d ever made. It didn’t come close to saying what she needed to say, about what’d happened at Sommerville. She blinked, and sipped scalding coffee from the mug in her hands.

  Ed waited a while, then said, ‘Have you considered that he needs you? Your visits. You’re the only one showing an interest in him.’

  ‘Maybe.’

  ‘If you stopped going . . . It’d be interesting to see how he responds to that. Whether he’d stop playing games, start engaging with you.’

  ‘Maybe.’ Did she want that? She didn’t know. ‘Something happened,’ she told Ed finally. ‘On Saturday, after we’d left. He was raped.’ The words dried up, her tongue parched and clumsy.

  Ed sucked a breath, then let it go, a slow puncture of regret. ‘Damn. I’m sorry.’

  She nodded. ‘Me too.’ She set down the mug. Studied her hands. ‘Except . . . when they told me – before I knew it was rape, when I thought it was just a thumping – I was glad. Just for a second. As if . . . it was proper punishment, at last. Instead of that private room, those books, an en suite bathroom . . . and I know it’s not like that. I know what prison is, of course I do, but he always looks so . . . well.’

  She shoved her hair from her forehead, impatiently. ‘Christ, Ed. What’s wrong with me? I’m a DI. I’m supposed to believe in rehabilitation. I do believe in it. With Stephen, though . . . I don’t know, maybe it’s all about punishment. I really think – it’s about punishment. Why else would I be glad, to get news like that?’

  ‘It was a knee-jerk reaction. You said you only felt it for a second. For most people it would’ve lasted longer than that.’

  She felt the hot stab of tears in her eyes. ‘I disgust myself. I’ve no business doing this job if I can be glad when a kid gets a kicking. Any kid. They wanted . . . He’s my kid brother. That’s how I ought to be thinking of him. They loved him.’ She shut her eyes, shaken by a new surge of anger and self-pity. ‘They loved him.’

  Ed said her name softly, moving close as if to hold her. She held him off with a stare. ‘I said this was about trying to forgive him, but it’s them. They took him in, made space for him in the family. My family. They made me a victim. That’s what I can’t forgive. Not him. Them.’

  She let him hold her, finally.

  Wept, finally.

  For her parents, for herself and for Stephen. The whole mess. The unfinished scarf and book. The eight-year-old girl with the silver charm bracelet, and the eight-year-old boy in the bedroom he wouldn’t change.

  ‘It was girls,’ she said, when she was done. ‘They held him down, raped him with a bottle, so badly he needed stitches. The ringleader was nineteen. The others could’ve been younger.’ She dried her tears with the backs of her hands, easing away from Ed’s embrace. She was supposed to be the strong one, in control. Another thing Stephen had stolen from her. ‘The psychiatrist said he’d been neglected before he was fostered, but not abused, or not that they knew of. I couldn’t believe how he’d gone that long in the system without anyone realising how deep the damage went.’

  She stood and walked away, going to the kitchen to fill a glass with water, bringing it back to the room where Ed was sitting, waiting for her.

  ‘He had emotional difficulties. That was the official line. His parents were addicts. The middle-class sort, who serve up a line of coke at the end of Sunday lunch. God knows what he saw when he was a little kid. Social services warned us that he didn’t talk much, but they made a point of saying what a good boy he was, well-behaved, nice manners. No problems with previous foster-carers.’

  She sat next to Ed on the sofa, rubbing her thumb at the lip of the glass, raising a bat’s squeak of sound. ‘I met him maybe six times. When I was home for birthdays, or Christmas. He was quiet. Watchful. He didn’t seem unhappy, or dangerous. There were no clues, I swear . . . No clues. The only creepy thing was my room, the way he hadn’t changed it.’ She frowned, sipping at the water. ‘The whole house felt that way, as if he’d left no trace of himself until the violence, the killings.’

  ‘Has the psychiatrist at Sommerville been able to talk to him?’

  ‘She talks. He doesn’t. Today . . . it’s the first time I’ve seen him show any emotion. The first time he let me see what he really thinks of me.’ An idea was knocking about in the back of her head, like a moth at a dimly lit window. She couldn’t pin it down. Something to do with Stephen, the girls, what Ed had said about shame and silence –

  ‘He has this drawer in his room, full of Mum and Dad’s stuff. Not just Dad’s glasses. Cards, photos . . .’ Stephen had wanted her to see inside, to know what he’d taken. Not just their lives, Greg and Lisa’s, but their lives. Her childhood.

  ‘I was inside a house once.’ She hadn’t told Ed this before. ‘After a really bad fire. Everywhere was . . . dripping. Black. It smelt . . . bitter,
like a fired gun.’

  She could see that house as clearly as if it was yesterday. The front door was in the back garden. All that was left of the staircase was six steps, leading nowhere. From the hall, she could see straight through to the garden at the back, piled high with blackened masonry. Part of the ceiling was still coming down, plaster shrapnel exploding in the puddles left by the fire hoses. ‘There was nothing left. Part of the bed was buried in this . . . pit where the floor used to be. No upstairs rooms. No roof. Just this pit.’ She wet her lips with the glass. ‘Two bodies in the bed. The fire didn’t kill them. It was the smoke. They were . . . lying back to back in the bed. It didn’t look like they woke up. We thought it was one body, at first. Until forensics separated it into two.’

  She shut her eyes tight for a second, then opened them.

  ‘I keep thinking . . . did they do something to provoke him? Stephen. I can’t believe it, but then I remember the way I felt, before I left. Dad could be so . . . impatient. Mum wanted to help, with everything. I used to think maybe they started fostering to have someone they could shape, the way I wouldn’t let them shape me.’ She looked into the glass, wishing she’d filled it with wine not water.

  When she spoke again, Ed had to lean in to listen. ‘There were defence wounds on her hands. The pattern of the bodies . . . probably meant Dad was trying to protect her.’

  She shut her eyes, holding the glass to her chest. ‘I coped, at the time. That’s the thing. I coped with everything. The funeral, the wills. I rented the house, because I wasn’t ready to sell it, but I didn’t let it slow me down.’

  She heard her voice harden, defensively. ‘I didn’t lose a day more than I had to. Welland was waiting for me to come apart at the seams. I put up with his positive-discrimination bullshit, bit my tongue – I’ve been biting it ever since. Just lately, it’s been like . . . trying to cram one of those toy snakes back into the tin after it’s out. I didn’t even know I’d let anything out. I thought I had it all tied down.’

  ‘You started to relax,’ Ed said. ‘Maybe. That gave the emotional adrenalin the chance it needed, to tank.’