Someone Else's Skin: (DI Marnie Rome)

by Hilary, Sarah

  She winced when she saw it. ‘What time was it sent?’

  ‘Forty minutes ago. I tried to call him, but there was no answer. I tried to call you, but they wouldn’t put me through, so I came down here.’ Dan clenched the phone so hard she heard his knuckles crack. ‘I need . . . to know what’s going on.’

  She nodded. ‘I know you do, but right now, I have to go. We know where he is.’

  His eyes jumped to her face. ‘Did you speak with him?’

  ‘Not yet.’

  They’d been trying Noah’s phone since the text came through, but without luck. Graves had hoped to negotiate that way, but unless someone answered the phone, it wasn’t going to happen.

  ‘Stay by a phone,’ she told Dan. ‘I have your numbers. I’ll call you as soon as there’s news.’

  Dan dropped his head, looking at the phone in his hand. ‘He didn’t send this.’ He looked back up at her, a blaze of tears in his eyes. ‘Did he?’

  Toby Graves was waiting in the Mercedes Sprinter, with Ed and a team of four PSU officers. Marnie nodded a greeting as she got in next to Ed, buckling up. ‘Someone alerted the ambulance service, yes?’

  Graves nodded. ‘It’s taken care of.’

  ‘Good.’ She was juggling two phones, one of which she was keeping clear in case of more texts from Noah, or whoever had his phone. Dan Noys was almost certainly right. Noah didn’t send the smiley face.

  ‘Nasiche Auma’ read like a warning.

  The smiley face was cruel, personal. Marnie suspected Hope of sending it, but why would Hope warn them about Simone? Unless she was setting her up . . .

  Her other phone buzzed, the one she wasn’t keeping clear for texts. She answered it as the Sprinter cut through traffic, headed for Putney Hill.

  ‘Ms Rome? It’s Paul Bruton, at Sommerville.’

  Her mouth, already parched, dried up completely. It was the middle of the night. Why was Bruton calling so late?

  ‘Is it an emergency?’ She didn’t want to hear what he had to say. There wasn’t room in her head – or her chest – for any more anxiety. ‘I’m dealing with an emergency here.’

  A tiny pause, then Bruton said, ‘In that case, of course it can wait.’

  ‘Is he all right?’

  ‘Yes.’ It sounded like the truth.

  ‘Good. I’ll call you when I can.’ She ended the call, rubbing her thumb at her fingerprints on the phone’s display.

  Ed touched a hand to her elbow. ‘Okay?’

  She nodded. ‘Stephen, but from the sound of it he’s fine. Maybe it was an update on their investigation into the assault.’ She wanted to close her eyes. Hide for a second from the crowd of faces in the Sprinter. She was glad of Ed’s nearness, his unspoken support. He was here at the behest of Toby Graves, because of his connection to Simone, but Marnie was glad of his nearness for her own sake. She wasn’t sure she could do this – face whatever was waiting for them in SW15 – without Ed.

  One day, she thought – and soon – I’ll give something back.

  Graves had been speaking into his phone. He ended the call, nodding at Marnie. ‘That was Welland. The Home Office has cleared an ARV, if we need it.’

  ‘I’d rather wait and see what we find when we get there.’ She didn’t want guns in the mix, if they could avoid it.

  The roads were nearly empty, but they still weren’t moving as fast as she’d have liked. Every second counted, she knew that. They could be late by as little as a second, and it would mean life or death for Noah Jake.

  Ron Carling was the next caller, with news of the Bissells. ‘They’re in Marrakesh. They flew out a week ago, not due back until next Tuesday.’

  ‘So the house is empty.’

  ‘No reports from the neighbours. It’s alarmed, according to police records, but there’s been nothing to suggest a break-in.’

  Marnie turned to Ed. ‘Simone wouldn’t still have a key, would she?’

  ‘I doubt it.’

  ‘But she knows the house . . .’ Marnie spoke into the phone. ‘Are we going to have to clear lots of bodies?’

  Carling knew she meant the neighbours. ‘Shouldn’t think so,’ he said. ‘The house is detached. I’m sending street views, so you can see the set-up.’

  ‘Thanks.’ She ended the call, telling Ed, ‘The Bissells are in Marrakesh. I’m guessing they gave up aid working.’

  ‘They gave it up after they adopted Simone.’ Ed watched the street lights through the Sprinter’s window. ‘They never thought she’d go back home to them. Now she’s there, but they’re not.’ He met her eyes, smiling slightly, an attempt at optimism.

  Neither one of them asked the question of what they were about to find at the house in Putney in the Bissells’ absence.

  28

  The bathroom floor was no longer warm. Noah was beginning to think it never had been warm, that he’d imagined the pulse of heat under him. If the Bissells had gone away, they wouldn’t have left the heating on. It made him wonder what else he was imagining.

  Where was Simone? Nasiche. He hadn’t seen her since he’d sent her to the kitchen for a knife. How long ago was that? Seconds, surely. A minute at most. In the dark, it was easy to forget what this room looked like, to imagine he was in another bathroom, not tied to anything except by his curiosity and fear.

  Rosa, his mum, is cleaning. He’s hiding in the airing cupboard, watching through a crack in the door. Her elbow swings in circles as she scrubs and wipes. Dirt is everywhere. Germs. She’d clean all day, if she could. The airing cupboard smells of fresh laundry, towels and bedding. The hot-water tank mutters when she runs the taps to rinse the sink, and the bath. He’s afraid to come out, in case she starts on him. Scrubbing and wiping. He’s six years old. An only child. Sol won’t be born for another year. Noah knows he should help his mum. Not just with the cleaning; with whatever drives her to do it, the way she sees danger everywhere and how her eyes fix on him, fearfully. Later, she’ll take him to the hospital, tell them about night terrors or bedwetting, or a strange rash on his skin that’s not there now but it was, it was. He’s seen police at the hospital bringing in partygoers, drunks. He should ask for help; maybe someone can find out what’s scaring her so badly. He doesn’t ask. He doesn’t help. He hides like a coward in the clean towels, until she’s finished.

  Screaming from the Bissells’ sitting room snapped him back to the present.

  ‘Simone!’ He hauled at the rope tying his hands. Pain tore at his chest. ‘Simone!’

  It wasn’t Simone, or not just Simone.

  Hope was screaming too. Both women, shrieking in terror, and rage.

  The house shook with the sound, the air warping as if it was on fire.

  Screaming. Raging.

  He couldn’t get to them, couldn’t see what was making the house shake.

  The sound rose, no longer human, like foxes fighting or mating, out in a night he didn’t know had fallen.

  29

  The house was thirties, detached. Reached by a private driveway. A security light lit the last six feet of the drive. Roses, again. Ranks of thorned bushes, black. Marnie registered the rose bushes dimly, her eyes on the windows. A storm porch at the front, two doors instead of the usual one. No lights at any of the windows.

  ‘Method of entry’s going to be easier at the back,’ Graves said. ‘How many rooms downstairs, d’you reckon?’

  ‘Four,’ Marnie said. She knew this type of house. ‘Big kitchen, at the back. Sitting room and reception, and a bathroom.’

  ‘Bathroom on the ground floor?’

  ‘Yes.’ She pointed out the way the drainpipes ran down the side of the house, and the wire cage covering a ventilation outlet on the ground floor. It was the same as her parents’ house. Four up, four down.

  Memories jostled for her attention – rusty handprints on the kitchen wall, something thick sticking her shoes to the floor – but she pushed it all aside.

  She needed to focus. Here. Now.

  The PSU offi
cers went in for a closer look, staying below window level. Graves wanted to go in through the back door. Dawn sat on their shoulders, lifting yellow light from black flak jackets. Marnie looked at the satellite views supplied by Ron Carling.

  ‘Conservatory at the back,’ one of the officers reported. ‘Kitchen’s clear. Curtains drawn in the other two rooms, but someone’s in there. We heard movement.’

  ‘What do you think?’ Graves wanted to know. ‘Do we wait for the SFOs?’

  ‘There’s no reason to think firearms are involved.’ The PSU team looked to Marnie to confirm this. She nodded. They shrugged at Graves. ‘It’s your call.’

  ‘We could try talking to Hope,’ Grave said, ‘on Noah’s phone.’

  ‘We’ve been trying that for the past half-hour. She’s not picking up.’ Marnie crossed her arms across the stab vest, the second time she’d worn one today.

  Ed Belloc had kitted up too, even though Graves wanted him to stay in the Sprinter. To be on hand if they needed him, for Simone’s sake, but otherwise to stay wide of whatever was happening in the house.

  Marnie didn’t want to talk to Hope Proctor. She wanted to get inside the house, to Simone and Noah. ‘Let’s go,’ she said to Graves. ‘It’s been too long already.’

  30

  She knew this house. The shape of the windows, where the rooms fell. Only the extension at the back was different. The Bissells had filled the conservatory with travel books and photographs, souvenirs. An Aztec rug, hand-thrown pots, what looked like a baby’s cradle woven from reeds. Marnie was hyper-alert, noticing every detail shown up by the team’s torchlight. The burnt ends of the reeds, grains of sand and soil on the stone floor, creases in the spines of the books. The peppered patch below Toby Graves’ left ear, where he hadn’t shaved high enough.

  The PSU team picked their way through the clutter in the conservatory, to the kitchen. The ghost of the other house was all around her. The house Stephen Keele had destroyed, as surely as if he’d set a fire, or planted a bomb.

  In the big kitchen at the back of the Bissells’ house, the light from recessed bulbs in the ceiling was a hard constellation of white. Police torches snagged at the bulbs, showing each in turn. The dimensions were familiar, despite the extravagance of a central island and a showy hang of utensils, spice racks climbing two walls. The kitchen stank of breadcrumbed fish. The torches swept the space for signs of life.

  Marnie stayed behind the PSU officers, behind Toby Graves. Blanking her eyes at the familiar space around her, putting her stare on the door to the sitting room. Afraid of ghosts, the retinal shadows of her parents. Defence wounds in her mother’s palms. Her father’s blood pooled on the blond-wood floor. She couldn’t keep the memories at bay, so instead she marshalled them: the blunt feel of brightness in her eyes on the night of the funeral, waiting for the last of the mourners to depart. The next morning, she’s the first at work, still drunk, wired, wanting Welland to throw her back in the deep end, because it’s preferable to grieving and it keeps her moving; no chance to stop and think about the hole ripped in her life by their deaths.

  A knife was missing from the Bissells’ kitchen block. Another missing knife. The stab vest was heavy on her shoulders, as if a child was clinging to her front. It wasn’t like last time, in Kentish Town. There was no battering ram or warnings yelled over loud music. In this house, silence was stiff as two fingers.

  You’re too late.

  The thought was too swift and sly for her to stop it.

  Too late. Again.

  The hairs on the back of her neck lifted. She drove her memory hard after something to see her through the next few minutes. Found her mother with her arms out, folding sheets in proficient semaphore. Marnie could sneak under the sweet-smelling cotton and steal a hug from her mum’s arms. She doesn’t, but she could.

  The whole time, she’s praying.

  Agnostic’s prayer, for Noah Jake.

  For this familiar house to have a different ending.

  Ahead of her, lights went on, sending shadows running for the walls.

  They’d found the women. Toby Graves was talking in the sitting room. A low, professional patois. Appeasing.

  Marnie moved to the doorway, looking into the room.

  Hope Proctor and Simone Bissell were huddled together on the floor, so close it was hard to tell where one woman ended and the other began. There was blood, but not as much as Marnie had feared. She stayed long enough to be sure both of them were alive, then followed the PSU team to the front of the house.

  ‘Simone . . .’ The echo of a shout, ragged, from the ground-floor bathroom.

  Marnie beat the PSU to it, punching her fist at the light switch outside the door, tripping over the suitcase by the bath, ending on her knees at Noah’s side.

  ‘Noah . . .’ She didn’t know what to do with her hands.

  His hands were over his head, tied to the steel underside of the sink with blue rope. He’d flayed the skin at his wrists, trying to get free. More rope tied his ankles. His feet were bare. Sweat glazed his face, and his breathing was tortured. She turned her head and shouted into the hall: ‘I need help in here!’

  Noah shuddered, blinking wet from his eyes, trying to get a fix on her face. She was near enough to feel the wave of relief that went through him.

  ‘Where’re you hurt, and how badly?’

  ‘Simone . . .’ He spoke in gasps. ‘Where’s . . . Simone?’

  ‘She’s safe.’ His pulse was thready, fretful under her fingers. His skin was clammy, cold. ‘Tell me how bad it is.’

  ‘Ribs . . . broken.’

  She glanced down his front, her eye catching the dull gleam of a kettlebell placed two feet from him on the tiled floor. She stripped off her jacket and laid it over his chest, grabbing a handful of towels from a rail and covering him before curling a careful hand to the side of his face. ‘Okay, it’s going to be okay. Ambulance’s here. You’re okay now.’

  ‘Hope . . .’

  She waited to see what he’d say, but the words died in his throat. ‘Noah, I need you to stay awake. Noah.’

  ‘Yes . . .’ He unstuck his eyes obediently. Blinked at the ceiling.

  A fuss of noise in the hall. Marnie moved aside for a female paramedic. ‘Broken ribs and he’s dehydrated.’

  The woman nodded at her, crouching by Noah’s side, checking his vital signs.

  Marnie sat on the edge of the bath, feeling like a fifth wheel. What was happening in the next room, with Hope and Simone? She didn’t move from the bath; she wanted to be able to tell Dan Noys that she’d stayed with Noah, the whole time.

  ‘How were these ribs broken?’ the paramedic asked.

  ‘Kettlebell—’ Noah jumped under her touch, the word bitten short.

  ‘Sorry.’ The medic moved her hands more cautiously over his chest.

  He gave a vague nod, his eyes stuttering shut until he remembered to open them again, moving his gaze feverishly across the ceiling.

  A second paramedic was in the doorway. There wasn’t enough room for three bodies in the bathroom. Marnie stood up, light-headed for a second. She moved aside to make way for the people who could help Noah.

  Standing in the doorway, keeping watch, she heard voices again, from the sitting room. Toby Graves, asking questions.

  Paramedics had separated Simone and Hope; she could hear the overlap of the medics’ voices as they treated the damage she’d yet to see. Even at this distance, Ed’s silence was a comfort. Marnie leaned into it instinctively, wondering which – if either – of the women in the other room was doing the same.

  Outside, on the gravelled drive of the house, she called the number in Westbourne Grove. ‘It’s Marnie Rome. He’s here. We think he’s going to be okay. We’re taking him to St George’s Hospital, in Tooting.’

  ‘I’ll be there.’ The relief in Dan Noys’ voice was sharp, staggering. ‘Thanks.’

  An ambulance took Noah Jake to St George’s. Paramedics would follow with Hope and Sim
one in separate cars. Ed had elected to go with Simone. Marnie and Toby Graves intended to go with Hope.

  A paramedic held Hope’s left arm elevated, for a defensive stab wound. There was a matching wound on her right arm, not as deep but still serious. She would need stitches, and possibly a blood transfusion.

  The Bissells would need a new sitting room carpet.

  The paramedics were still washing the blood from Simone, but so far they’d found no cuts on her. One of the PSU team had bagged a kitchen knife at the scene. After taking it from Simone’s hand.

  Hope kept saying, ‘It wasn’t her fault. It wasn’t her fault.’ She was crying as she said it.

  Simone wasn’t saying anything, dry-eyed, her gaze going beyond Hope. Beyond everyone. Whatever she’d witnessed, whatever happened here, she wasn’t capable of telling.

  Too late, Marnie thought again.

  In front of Graves and the others, Marnie spoke the words she should’ve spoken days ago, at the women’s refuge in Finchley: ‘Hope Proctor, I’m arresting you for the assault and attempted murder of Leo Proctor.’ She paused, looking straight into the woman’s wet blue eyes. ‘And for causing grievous bodily harm with intent to Noah Jake.’

  Hope wept until her shoulders shook. To Simone, Marnie said gently, ‘I have to caution you, until we know what happened.’

  The PSU officers were watching her. She could hear Welland’s voice in her ear, speaking of past mistakes. ‘Do you understand?’ she asked Simone.

  Simone looked straight through her, to the wall behind.

  Marnie recited the caution, then turned to Ed. ‘Stay with her, will you?’

  He nodded. ‘Yes.’

  DC Abby Pike joined them at St George’s. Marnie briefed her on the charges against Hope. ‘Make sure you stay with her. And handcuff her, as soon as the doctors say it’s acceptable to do so.’

  Abby nodded. ‘How’s Noah?’

  ‘They took him into surgery. Unless they find internal bleeding, his chances are good. Great, even.’