Shifting Skin

by Chris Simms

  Finally Dawn looked up. ‘No, you mustn’t! Give it to me.’ She made a feeble lunge for the book but he batted her hand away. ‘Is this her? Fiona Wilson? It is, isn’t it?’

  ‘Leave her alone!’ She tried to stand but he shoved her back on the bed. The first time he’d ever used force against her. She curled into a ball as he ripped the page out and strode from the room.

  The buzzer made Fiona’s hand jolt. She grabbed a tissue and wiped off the bit of misapplied lipstick. Then she looked towards the door. No one had arranged to come round. Besides, she had to be at the hotel airport in under an hour: her first client was expecting her.

  The buzzer went again.

  This time Fiona replaced the lipstick in her make-up bag and stood. She straightened her dress and walked over to the door. As she peered out into the hallway the buzzer went yet again.

  She padded across to the outer door and looked through the peephole to the street. All she could see was rain drifting down and a huge bunch of flowers.

  Joanne Perkins, she thought. It must be a good-luck gesture. Something she does for all her escorts before their first date. How sweet.

  She opened the door and looked out. The flowers dropped to the doorstep and her husband’s dripping face leered at her.

  ‘Found you, you fucking bitch.’

  The sour stink of whisky hit her in the face.

  Fiona tried to slam the door, but he jammed his foot into the gap. Knowing she’d never get her bedsit door locked in time, she whirled round and darted for the stairs. As she raced up them his footsteps were heavy behind her. She ran into the bathroom and slid the heavy brass bolt shut. The window was half open when he started kicking the door. Climbing out on to the windowsill, she reached an arm round the wet drainpipe. Her car was parked directly below, spare key hidden in the gap between the bricks.

  Chapter 33

  ‘Can I remind you this is a murder investigation?’ Rick shook his head disbelievingly at Jon. ‘That’s right, the investigation is ongoing...Yes, you go and check with someone more senior.’

  He cupped a hand over the phone mouthpiece. ‘Incredible. The General Medical Council. Protecting patients and guiding doctors, according to their web site. More interested in looking after their own, if you ask me.’ Abruptly he took his hand off the mouthpiece. ‘Yes, it’s extremely urgent. Call it a matter of life and death if you like – the Hippocratic oath has something to say about that, doesn’t it?...Thank you. Email is perfect.’

  A message pinged on Rick’s computer ten minutes later. He printed the documents out and sat down.

  ‘Jesus Christ,’ he whispered. ‘He’s a bit more than the plain old Dr O’Connor written on that brass plate outside the Beauty Centre.’

  ‘Go on,’ said Jon, leaning forward, elbows on the table.

  ‘Try Dr Eamon O’Connor BDS, MB Bchir, FDSRC (Eng), FRCS (Eng), Phd. He’s an oral and maxillofacial surgeon.’

  Jon stared at him blankly. ‘What’s that?’

  ‘Fucked if I know,’ Rick replied, scanning down the top sheet. ‘Born 5 August 1948, Dublin. Spent five years at dental school there, then two years training as a surgical dentist at Bart’s in London. Then he took a postgraduate qualification at the Royal College. Passed it to become a Fellow in Dental Surgery.’

  ‘So he’s really a dentist?’ Jon asked, thinking about Tyler

  Young’s missing teeth.

  ‘I haven’t even started yet. Then he went back to medical school as an undergraduate. Four years at Cambridge, emerging as Dr O’Connor. One year as a junior houseman at Guy’s, where he spent six months training in general surgery and six months training in general medicine.’

  ‘General surgery?’

  ‘Wait,’ said Rick. ‘There’s plenty more. Next he spent two years doing a Basic Surgical Training Rotation. Six months at the Accident and Emergency at St Thomas’s, six months in their cardio-thoracic unit, and finally one year learning plastic surgery at University College London hospital. Then he took another exam to become a Fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons. After that he spent five years as a registrar at Guy’s. He got a consultant’s post there, and he started specialising in cranio-facial surgery.’

  Rick read the next paragraph in silence, shaking his head all the while.

  ‘What?’ Jon demanded.

  ‘Get this. It says that while he was a consultant at Guy’s he reconstructed a lot of faces that had undergone major traumas. Even worked on a couple of casualties from the Falklands conflict. But his particular area of expertise, and one that he pioneered new techniques in, was removing sections of patient’s faces to allow neurosurgeons access to tumours located at the base of the brain.’

  Jon got up. ‘You’re serious?’

  Before he could walk round and look at the documents himself, Rick tossed the top one across the desk.

  Jon sat back down and flicked through it, stopping at the last page. ‘It says here that, in 1989, he attended a hearing of the Professional Conduct Committee. Something called an FTP.’

  ‘Fit to Practise,’ said Rick, consulting another sheet. ‘The committee judged that his FTP was impaired due to mental ill health resulting from a drug dependency. He botched an operation and left a patient with brain damage.’

  ‘What was he taking?’

  ‘Diamorphine.’ Rick whistled. ‘He got addicted to smack. Mitigating circumstances according to this. He smashed his knee in a road traffic accident and that led to his dependency.’

  Jon snapped his fingers. ‘The strange footprint! He’s never emerged from behind that bloody great desk of his. We’ve never seen him walk.’

  Rick traced a finger down his sheet. ‘So they suspended him from the medical register. Then, three years later, they allowed him to practise again, but with conditions on his registration.’

  ‘Don’t tell me,’ Jon said, dropping the print out on the desk.

  ‘He’s not allowed to perform surgery.’

  ‘Exactly,’ said Rick. ‘He moved to Manchester and set up the

  Beauty Centre in 1994.’

  They parked in the side street by the Beauty Centre.

  Jon looked into the rear yard of the building. ‘The Range Rover’s there. He must be in.’ Then he glanced up at the heavy sky. ‘This is coming in off the Irish sea. It won’t stop for a while yet.’

  They hurried round to the front entrance of the blackened building and rang the buzzer. After waiting a couple of minutes, Jon stepped back out into the rain and looked up. Doctor O’Connor tried to shrink back from the window, but their eyes had met.

  Jon held a finger to his chest, then pointed upwards. Seconds later, the lock on the door clicked open.

  They moved quickly up the stairs, Jon anxious to close down his time to think. When they entered his room, O’Connor was sitting behind his desk removing the skin from another tangerine. ‘Gentlemen? You caught me just as I was about to lock up.’

  They shook hands again and sat down. Jon glanced at Rick, a cue for him to begin.

  ‘We don’t want to keep you,’ said Rick.

  ‘Go ahead.’ The doctor smiled and sat back, the leather of his chair creaking slightly. ‘News about Gordon Dean?’

  ‘No.’ Rick slid the photo of Tyler Young from his jacket and laid it on the desk between them.

  Jon studied O’Connor’s reaction. He looked down, put the half-peeled piece of fruit aside, then extended a forefinger and rotated the photo so it was in perfect alignment with the edge of his desk. As usual he kept a poker face, not a hint of emotion on it. He looked up and raised his eyebrows questioningly, the skin on his forehead barely wrinkling.

  ‘Have you ever seen this woman?’ Rick asked. The doctor didn’t look at the photo. ‘No.’

  ‘You’ve never spoken to her?’

  ‘How could I say? I get a lot of telephone enquiries. I could have spoken to her, but I wouldn’t know what on earth she looked like. To what is this in relation?’

  ‘According to
her diary, she was discussing lip implants with you. Then you mentioned breast implants, too. Your prices were extremely competitive.’

  O’Connor interlinked his fingers over the photograph, concealing the smiling face below. ‘That’s impossible for two reasons. One, I only perform non-surgical procedures. Two, she’s clearly under twenty-five and I’ve made it a condition of the Beauty Centre not to offer treatment to anyone below that age.’ He slid a brochure across the desk. ‘Here, you’ll find it in my introduction on page two.’

  Jon got up and walked over to the shelves of books behind the doctor. O’Connor clearly found his presence there unsettling and partly turned in his seat.

  Rick ignored the glossy booklet and nodded at the photograph.

  ‘The body of Tyler Young was recently found with her breasts, face and large amounts of her flesh removed. Have you ever spoken to Carol Miller or Angela Rowlands? Their bodies were also discovered not long ago with most of their skin missing.’

  O’Connor turned his attention back to Rick. Still his expression was neutral. ‘Of course I haven’t.’

  Jon spoke. ‘Interesting collection of books you have here. Tell me, Doctor O’Connor, you only perform cosmetic procedures?’

  ‘Aesthetic medicine, I prefer to call it.’

  ‘So why have you got a copy of this?’ He didn’t identify Gray’s Anatomy or take it off the shelf, trying to oblige the doctor to get out of his seat.

  But O’Connor leaned forward and peered round Jon. Before answering, he looked at Rick, then back at Jon, his eyes calculating. ‘Would you mind sitting down? I can’t speak to you and your colleague if you’re hovering behind me.’

  Jon shrugged and took a seat, pleased to have rattled the doctor’s apparent calm.

  ‘I used to perform surgical procedures. Facial reconstructions for people who’d developed brain tumours or for the victims of car crashes and suchlike. Then, rather ironically, I was involved in a crash myself. My left knee was badly damaged and I developed an addiction to painkillers.’

  ‘What sort of painkillers?’ asked Rick.

  O’Connor’s eyes filled with shame. ‘Diamorphine. I had free and easy access to it through my surgical work. Eventually it had a detrimental effect on my ability to perform. I was investigated by the General Medical Council and my licence was suspended. After attending a rehabilitation course, I was allowed to practise again – but with the condition I didn’t perform surgery. That book is a leftover from my earlier career.’

  The room was silent for a moment. Then Jon looked around and said, ‘For a business, this place is always very quiet. When do you actually treat people?’

  ‘Normally I use Thursdays and Fridays as my treatment days. It gives customers the weekend to recover. The rest of the week is given over to fielding enquiries, conducting consultations and, if I think it’s appropriate, booking in customers for treatment.’

  ‘So if those days are for, essentially, drumming up business, why did you ignore the door buzzer on our previous visit?’ Jon stood up again and went to the window.

  The doctor shifted in his seat. ‘Probably because I was talking with you.’

  ‘On our last visit I looked out of this window, like I’m doing now, and saw that your caller was a woman I recognised. She works in a motel on the A57. When she saw me looking down she couldn’t walk away quickly enough. Why do you think that was?’

  The doctor raised one shoulder a fraction. ‘Perhaps she was coy about the fact she was considering aesthetic medicine. There’s still a surprising amount of stigma attached, though it’s lessening all the time, thanks to the exemplary lead provided by our celebrities.’

  Jon thought he heard a cynical note in the doctor’s voice. He walked over to the doorway and pointed across the corridor to the treatment room. ‘Would you mind if I look around? Is this where you carry out your procedures?’

  The doctor kept his seat but leaned forward, agitation finally showing. ‘I’m afraid that room is locked.’

  ‘Surely you have the key?’

  ‘I’ve left it at home. My nurse has the other, but she’s only here if we’re treating customers.’ He licked his lips.

  Jon stared at him, sensing the man was telling lies. The blank expression was still clamped on the doctor’s face, but a faint sheen of sweat glistened on his forehead. Jon’s hand was outstretched to try the door handle. Instead, he crossed the room and, like a predator closing in for the kill, leaned in towards the doctor’s face. Small beads of sweat oozed out of the shiny skin and began to run down his forehead.

  ‘You’re sweating, Doctor. Or can’t you feel that? Perhaps you’ve been using Botox a bit too much. It wouldn’t be the first time you’ve self-administered, after all.’

  The doctor angrily wiped a hand across his forehead. ‘I resent that insinuation and I don’t like the direction this discussion is taking. I’m not prepared to say anything more without my solicitor present.’

  ‘That’s probably a good idea,’ Jon replied.

  O’Connor stood up and walked to the door: they saw that he had a pronounced limp. ‘Good day, officers. You can show yourselves out.’

  As they passed him, Jon smiled. ‘I’m sure we’ll be speaking to you again very soon, Doctor.’

  When they emerged on to the street, the drizzle was still falling.

  ‘Why didn’t we just arrest him?’ asked Rick.

  Jon kept walking. ‘After what happened with Pete Gray? The top of McCloughlin’s head would blow clean off.’

  ‘The man’s bullshitting us! It’s as clear as day.’

  ‘I know.’ Jon unlocked the car. ‘Let’s wait here and see what he does next. He’s rattled. My bet is he’ll be off like a shot.’

  They moved further down the street and swung the car round. While they waited Jon watched the giant cranes looming out of the haze shrouding Ancoats. One was silently turning, a load of girders suspended from its end. Jon was reminded of a gentle animal, quietly grazing. But it was a harsh clanging that carried from behind the buildings in front. The noise seemed more akin to destruction, as if that part of the city was being demolished, not rebuilt.

  O’Connor’s Range Rover appeared ten minutes later. He drove up to the junction with the main road and turned right. With their windscreen wipers on their fastest setting, Jon and Rick followed him as he headed along Great Ancoats Street, passing the black glass of the old Daily Express offices and as- sorted derelict industrial buildings. Soon he got to the junction with the A57, just up from the Hurlington Health Club. He turned left, away from the city centre and towards the Platinum Inn. The streetlights flickered to life as the sky darkened above them.

  ‘We’re right in the Butcher’s dumping ground. It’s him. It has to be him!’ Rick whispered excitedly.

  Jon kept a couple of cars behind. They passed the motel and the greyhound stadium, then crawled through Gorton, failed shops and the occasional massage parlour lining the road. When they reached the roundabout for the M60, the Range Rover took the final exit, heading south, keeping in the slow lane, speed never creeping above seventy miles per hour.

  ‘The turn off for Didsbury is in two junctions’ time,’ Jon said, remembering Dr Heath’s report.

  But O’Connor took the next exit. They dropped back and shadowed him along the A560, passing a Safeway and then a boarded-up building with the name Quaffers just visible above the entrance.

  Five minutes later they were driving through the centre of Romiley, one car behind him. The high street petered out, shops replaced by terraces of housing. Soon they changed to semi-detached, then finally detached as countryside opened up on the left of the road. Farm lights dotted the dark hills in the distance. After a couple of hundred metres the Range Rover’s brake lights lit up and it swung into a driveway closed in by large fir trees.

  Jon and Rick pulled up on the verge. A privet hedge shielded the house from the road and they squeezed through the soaking branches into O’Connor’s garden.

&
nbsp; Crouching behind a rhododendron bush, they saw him hobble up the steps to a large Victorian house with wooden gables and a band of decorative brickwork running above the ground-floor mullioned windows. The exterior light came on and he set his briefcase down at his feet in order to unlock the front door.

  The hallway lights went on. He came back outside and walked over to the rear of the Range Rover. After glancing down the drive, he opened the boot. He leaned in and, with some effort, straightened up. In his arms was a large object wrapped in a sheet.

  ‘Christ almighty!’ Rick whispered as the material slipped and a pair of feet wearing women’s shoes were revealed.

  ‘Oh, my fucking God,’ Jon said, straightening up.

  He felt Rick pulling him down as the doctor plodded up the steps into his house and shut the door behind him. ‘Wait, Jon. We’ve got to call for back-up.’

  Jon shook his head. ‘They’ll take half an hour, easily. She could be dead by then.’

  Squinting at the placard beside the front door, Rick scrabbled for his phone. ‘DS Saville here. We need back-up. We have a potential hostage situation at The Briars, Compstall Lane...Yes, Armed Response Vehicle, everything. You’ll see our car parked on the side of the road. It’s a dark-blue Volvo, registration mike, alpha, zero, two, hotel, tango, foxtrot.’

  He lowered the phone. ‘They’re on the way.’

  A light showed in a tiny window at the base of the house, just above ground level.

  ‘He’s got a cellar,’ Jon whispered. ‘He’s taken her down into the cellar. He’s skinning them down there and then driving back into Belle Vue to dump their bodies.’

  Keeping low, he splashed through the shallow puddles dotting the lawn, slowing when he reached the driveway. Carefully, he crossed the tarmac and crouched against the wall.

  Rick emerged from the gloom and squatted down beside him.

  Jon lay on his stomach and tried to look through the filthy pane of glass. A shadow moved across the room below and he was just able to hear a door open. ‘He’s down there. Taken her into a side room, I think.’