Someone Else's Skin: (DI Marnie Rome)

by Hilary, Sarah

  ‘But she preferred hurting you.’

  ‘I was an animal.’ He dropped his voice into the pit of his throat. ‘She wanted me to behave like what I was. An animal. Then she punished me for it.’ His face contorted, as if this was too much truth for him to stand. ‘But she could be sweet, gentle, and I understood, after what she went through at home, what she saw happening to her mum. She thought it hadn’t affected her, but it must’ve done. It must.’

  ‘Yes.’

  Empowering Leo, then emasculating him, making him complicit in the abuse. Demanding he behave like her father, then beating him for it. Making him beat her. That was more than a split personality, a combination of her mother’s submission and her father’s aggression. Marnie didn’t know exactly what it was. It would take a professional to figure Hope out, but it made sense of her resentment during the interview at the hospital, the way she swung between tears and toughness. ‘She was prescribed antidepressants. Didn’t her GP realise something serious was going on?’

  ‘She was good at hiding it.’ Leo propped his head to the pillows, wearily. ‘She hid it from you.’

  True. Marnie had fallen for the little lost girl. Hope had perfected the act at an early age, her defence against her father. She looked the part, frail and blonde, with those china-doll eyes and hands. Hard to imagine, even now, that she’d terrorised Leo Proctor, a man more than twice her size and weight. Marnie wanted to ask how Hope had made Leo climb into the space under the stairs, what words she’d used to make that happen. Conditioned behaviour was complex, a tangled mess of love and lies, threats and promises. How many times had he crawled in, sat scrabbling at the floor and walls? How many times had he forgiven her, only for her to beat him again, worse than before? He’d held down a job, which meant he left the house five days out of seven, always returning for more of the same. What was he holding out for – a proper explanation for her cruelty? Reconciliation? The chance of redemption, for the pair of them?

  ‘Do you think she intends to hurt Simone Bissell?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Leo said.

  ‘But she despises weak women. Victims. If she sees Simone in that light . . .’

  ‘Maybe. I don’t know.’ He looked up at her, exhaustion lining his face.

  ‘Leo . . . What about the suitcase? Are you sure you don’t know what was inside the suitcase she took from the house?’

  The answer was in his eyes.

  It was nothing good.

  4

  Two men – one white, the other black – stood on the doorstep, waiting for Henry Stuke to answer the bell. His first thought was Jehovah’s, but these two were empty-handed, and the white one had grubby skin, tired-looking, like an elephant’s hide.

  Police. They were police. Plain-clothes detectives.

  A rush of panic brought bile to the back of his mouth. He swallowed it, hearing the doorbell shrill a second time. If they kept that up, the twins would wake.

  He went into the hall, past the mirror that Freya had insisted he put up so she could check her face on the way out, back in the days when she cared how she looked to strangers. In Freya’s mirror, he looked pasty, guilty. He smoothed his hair and buried his left fist in his pocket, before answering the door.

  ‘Henry Stuke?’ The detective with the grubby skin showed his ID, holding it up the way a preacher would hold a bible, fingers splayed.

  Henry couldn’t really read the ID, with the sun squirming on the plastic wallet, but he nodded. ‘What’s this about?’

  ‘I’m DS Carling, this is DS Jake. You own a Prius.’ He read off the registration number. ‘Is that right?’

  ‘Yes. Yep, that’s right.’

  ‘Where were you on Friday afternoon, Mr Stuke?’

  ‘I was . . . Let’s see. Friday? Working. Yeah, most of the day I was working.’

  ‘Where do you work? Actually,’ DS Carling looked up and down the street, ‘tell you what, can we come inside to chat?’

  That meant they didn’t have a warrant. Maybe this wasn’t as bad as he’d feared.

  ‘Okay, but can you keep it down?’ He pulled a look of apology. ‘I’ve got babies sleeping upstairs.’

  ‘Babies?’ DS Carling mirrored Henry’s look of apology, adding a touch of sympathy. ‘They sleep much?’

  ‘Not as much as I’d like.’ They shared a grin. It wasn’t as bad as he’d feared.

  The young one – DS Jake – hadn’t spoken yet. He was good-looking enough for TV. Henry had seen him before, in the unmarked Mondeo at the refuge, and at the hospital where they’d taken her.

  ‘Sit down. I mean, if you’d like.’ He kept his left hand in his pocket.

  ‘How old are they?’ Carling cast his eyes at the ceiling.

  ‘Nine months next week.’ Henry tried to sound happy, the way he was supposed to feel. He was praying they wouldn’t wake. If they started their grizzling, he didn’t know if he could keep up the proud dad act. ‘Twins.’

  ‘Nine months. That’s a nice age,’ Carling said. ‘Are they walking yet?’

  ‘No. No, not yet. Crawling a lot, you know. Getting about.’

  Carling nodded. He sat on the sofa, picking up a plastic toy: a red truck with beads inside that rattled when you rolled it across the floor. Henry couldn’t remember if he’d wiped the puke off it. The sitting room smelt dirty, of nappies and dust. God knows the last time they cleaned in here, he and Freya. The twins’ stuff was everywhere. Baby wipes in green boxes, tippy mugs, board books with soggy chewed corners.

  Henry lowered himself on to the sofa next to DS Carling, keeping his hand in his pocket, his fingers wet with sweat. DS Jake stayed standing, looking around the room.

  ‘So . . . what’s this about? Friday, you said.’

  ‘You were working.’ Carling held the red truck in his hands, fondly. How many years since he was wiping up sick and shit? So long, he’d forgotten, smiling like all the memories were good ones, like fatherhood was one long laugh.

  Henry clenched his fist in his pocket. ‘I’m a plumber, do a bit of carpentry sometimes, put in new kitchens.’ He laughed. ‘Mind you, you should see the state of ours. I’ll have to get it sorted before they’re walking.’

  ‘Nah, you just fix up a safety gate, you’ll be fine.’ Carling put the truck to one side. ‘You weren’t in Finchley on Friday, then?’

  ‘Finchley . . . Actually, yeah, I think I was. Shit.’ He looked from Carling to DS Jake and back. ‘This isn’t a parking thing, is it? Only I was on an emergency call. All that bastard rain brought down a ton of guttering . . .’

  ‘It’s not about parking,’ DS Jake said.

  Henry stared at him. He didn’t like DS Jake. Didn’t like the way he stood there looking like nothing could put a crease in his suit, or a line on his forehead. Speaking softly, as if he understood about sleeping babies when what the fuck could he know, at his age, about anything?

  DS Carling must’ve been thinking the same thing, because he said, ‘Don’t mind DS Jake. He’s counting his lucky stars none of this is in store for him.’ He winked at Henry, rolling his eyes in a matey gesture that Henry only half understood.

  ‘So what’s it about?’ Henry asked. ‘Something about the car, you said.’

  ‘You were in Finchley on Friday, then at the North Middlesex yesterday.’ Carling sat forward, elbows on the saggy knees of his suit. ‘We’re investigating something that happened at those two places, on those two days.’

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘We can’t go into details right now.’ An apologetic grin. ‘We just need to know why you were at the hospital yesterday. Friday, you say you were working.’

  ‘That’s right.’ He wet his upper lip. It tasted stale. ‘And I took the twins to the hospital yesterday. They were coughing and I panicked. You know how it is.’

  Carling nodded. He looked at the family photos along the bookcase. ‘Your wife’s not home?’

  ‘She’s at her sister’s, just became an auntie.’ His smile felt sickly on his
face. ‘More new babies. I said I’d look after our two, but you know how it is. First-time nerves. I’d not heard them cough like that before.’

  ‘But they were okay. I mean, you didn’t go into the hospital.’ Carling looked a bit embarrassed. ‘CCTV showed you sitting outside, in the Prius. You didn’t go in.’

  ‘They calmed down. Fell asleep.’ Henry managed a laugh. ‘I felt a right wally.’

  Carling nodded. He’d started looking bored, like this was a waste of his time. That should have made Henry happy, but it pissed him off. As if the fact of the twins meant he couldn’t be a suspect, or a threat. Carling should’ve seen Henry with that bitch. Not the last time, the night of the funeral, but the time before. If he’d seen the stuff Henry had done to that bitch, he wouldn’t be looking bored, like he couldn’t wait to get out of here and back to some proper police work. This was proper police work, Henry thought savagely. You should’ve seen what I had planned for her.

  Carling shifted on the sofa and the red plastic truck rolled to the edge of the cushions and fell, nearly hitting the floor except Henry caught it in time. His reflexes took him by surprise; he’d been scared of the noise the truck would make; a noise the twins knew, and loved. Scared they’d wake and start up.

  DS Jake said, ‘What happened to your hand, Mr Stuke?’

  ‘It’s . . . Henry. I’m Henry.’ He held on to the truck.

  ‘What happened to your hand, Henry?’

  He turned the hand so they could both see it, clawed like an old man’s, fingers pulled into a fist, skin scarred and puckered up the heel, like someone had cut it open and stitched it, badly, shut again. ‘Six months ago . . . I was fixing a sink,’ he lied. ‘Old pipes collapsed, trapped me.’

  He’d been trapped, that much was true. Bitch had pinned him down, sat on his chest, for what felt like hours. He thought he’d die on that hotel floor, under her.

  ‘They had to cut me free.’ He turned the hand to the light, ashamed of the sight of it. He had to hide it from everyone, on buses, in the street. People stared otherwise. If he’d gone straight to casualty, maybe they could’ve fixed it better, but he’d stayed hidden in the hotel, afraid to leave in case she was waiting for him.

  He should’ve guessed what was in store for him when he’d seen her dressed like that. Like she’d come from a funeral. He should’ve guessed when he saw that rage in her eyes. He’d thought it’d be great – the best time yet – but he was stupid, clumsy.

  He turned his back when she told him to, thinking – what? That she was going to surprise him with sexy underwear, maybe a new tattoo. Never saw it coming, until she hit him with that fucking thing, his ribs cracking like rusted pipe.

  ‘Looks like you were lucky to keep it,’ DS Carling said. He meant Henry’s hand.

  ‘Yes. Yes, I was.’

  A low warning noise from overhead, like an engine starting up: the twins waking.

  All three of them looked in that direction.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Henry said. ‘I’ll have to go up to them.’

  ‘That’s okay.’ Carling stood. ‘I think we’re done here.’

  5

  ‘My father had a driver,’ Simone said. ‘I never knew his name. If I needed his attention, I had to – press the intercom in the back of the car. I was only to press it in an emergency, if I needed him to pull over, because I was unwell. I wasn’t to press it just because I wanted to talk about my day, or because it was lonely in the back of the car.’

  Hope was peeling an apple, with a knife. The apple’s skin was a thin red bracelet around her wrist. When Simone stopped speaking, Hope glanced up, her stare like the knife, sharp. Simone swallowed the dryness in her mouth. ‘My father’s driver wore a peaked cap. I’d sometimes catch his eye in the mirror. He always looked away first. His – his uniform suited him, better than my leotard suited me. Pink and black do not go together, whatever my father said. The man who called himself my father.’ She dropped her voice to a whisper. ‘Charles Bissell.’

  Hope licked apple juice from the back of her hand.

  ‘He had a tattoo on his neck. The driver. A hawk, blue. I remember thinking it wouldn’t show against my skin.’ Simone spread her palms, pink and empty.

  ‘What did he do?’ Hope said.

  Simone dipped her head away, chasing after the memory. ‘The ballet teacher was always tapping me on the shoulder with her stick. “You are rolling. We are not waves. We do not roll.” Everywhere on me was flat, then, even my feet. I didn’t understand what she meant. When I looked into the mirror, if I concentrated, I saw my mother.’ She covered her eyes with her hands. ‘Mine was the only black face in the room. All that pink. Leotards and – and tights and satin shoes. And me.’

  She’d stuck to the leather seat in her father’s car. The car was black, but the inside was the colour of whipped cream. Simone had to peel her bare shoulders away from the buttoned seat, her skin making a kissing sound. Sometimes she kicked her feet at the back of the passenger seat and her father’s driver looked at her, in the mirror. He wasn’t angry. He wasn’t allowed to be. When he looked away, she stuck her tongue out at him. Not all the memories were painful, but Hope only wanted the ones that were.

  ‘Tell me about the soldiers,’ Hope said. ‘In the village. Before the Bissells.’

  ‘They – they came at dusk, and dawn. The most dangerous times of day. I remember . . . their arms.’ Simone stretched out her own arms, no longer expecting a hug from Hope. ‘The muscle wound like – like ropes.’

  A sound outside made her stop, her heart drumming in her chest. Hope glanced in the direction of the noise, then back at Simone. It was a car passing, that was all. A car.

  ‘Your father,’ Hope said next. Her voice was the same as it had always been. Soft, sweet, drawing confidences from Simone as a soap plaster draws splinters from a thumb.

  It hadn’t been like this between them at the refuge. Then, it was silence that brought them together. Silence and something like peace. Perhaps all the time Hope was holding in these questions, her need to know everything about Simone’s past. She didn’t understand why Hope needed to know; she only knew that the telling made her less – and Hope more, as if the other woman drew power from Simone’s words. More than words – pain. Hope wanted to hear about Simone’s pain, the things from her past that had hurt her the most.

  As long as she kept talking – as long as she did exactly as Hope said, no more and no less – it would be all right.

  ‘When – when he asked about the ballet classes, I said I hated them. He would look sad, then he’d smile, as if it was a joke we shared. He would put his hands on my head.’

  She remembered the thinness of his fingers between her cornrows, this stranger who’d stolen her. Charles Bissell, his wife’s face lined like a riverbed after a long drought.

  ‘He was only my father on paper. He said it was the same, but I knew it was not. He took me from the village. My brothers and sisters . . . The soldiers took them, for the Lord’s Army. All the children in the village were stolen, one way or another.’

  The ache in her head was awful, but it was nothing, she knew that. ‘Each morning before class, he would pin an orchid to my leotard. For luck. In the car, I would peel its petals on to the carpet. The car smelt . . . like decay. They – the Bissells – were afraid of how I was growing up, the questions I was asking. They were afraid I’d find out that they’d stolen me. The only good thing was that I was one less recruit for the LRA.’

  She could see her old anger, remote as a bird circling in a full sky. ‘I used to think – even that would have been better than them. Their rules. Their silence. Lies.’

  Hope ate a slice of apple, passing her tongue across her lips.

  ‘In my village, I remember, one night, hiding from the rebels. I was so scared, trying to keep still, not to scream.’ She put her hand up to guard against the memory.

  Bats. She remembered bats flying down from the trees, warm and squirming, like the sky splitting
into bits. Her anger was nothing, a cold firecracker after a night of crazy celebration. Speaking like this, she was back in the village. Eight years old, watching for death from every corner, heat pressed like a blank face to the windows. The red stench of dying. Men with their guts held like infants in their arms.

  ‘Some of the soldiers were children, taken from other villages. Kids in camouflage, cut down to fit. The rebels’ flag stitched to their chests. Red, black and blue. My hands . . .’ She spread them again, searching the pink of her palms. ‘My hands stained . . . wet with fear.’

  ‘You were afraid,’ Hope said.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Of what?’

  ‘Of being taken by the soldiers. Of being killed. Dying there, in the dirt.’

  Her mother had spread a blanket over the dirt, when Simone was eight. The blanket was green and gold. Dark patches lay on it, like shadows. There was no sun inside the house. The patches were stains. Her sister’s blood, and her mother’s. Her mother’s mother’s. Her aunt’s blood and her aunt’s aunt’s. They held her down, all these women, on the stains they’d spilled on the green and the gold. Her blood was a new shadow, red. It soaked through the blanket, into the dirt. ‘I was afraid of dying in the dirt.’

  Tears wet her skirt, like rain falling. She didn’t know how to make it stop. She only knew she had to keep doing whatever Hope said.

  ‘Now,’ Hope said. ‘Tell me about Lowell.’

  6

  ‘Rome?’ It was Ed Belloc. ‘You wanted me to call you.’

  ‘Is there news of Ayana?’

  ‘Nothing. Where are you?’

  ‘Just leaving the North Middlesex. I have to call in at the station, then we can meet, if you’re free.’

  Ed, hearing the sharpness in her voice, said, ‘What’s happened?’

  ‘Nothing good.’

  The station stank of coffee and whiteboard markers. Someone had switched on a fan, churning the air to soup. Marnie went to Noah’s desk. ‘Where’s DS Jake?’