Skin

  ‘Hi.’

  The eyes studied her suspiciously. ‘What are you? Jehovah’s Witness? Better get off my land.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘If you’re selling something you can eff off too. Don’t like fuckin’ salesmen knocking on my door.’

  ‘No. I just want a word.’

  ‘You have to be joking. Better get off my land now.’

  ‘Are you Ruth?’

  There was a pause.

  ‘Ruth Lindermilk?’

  ‘Who are you?’

  Flea took off her cap and rubbed a hand through her hair, showing herself as plainly as she could. ‘My name’s Phoebe.’

  ‘Yeah – but who are you?’

  ‘I’m from the . . .’

  ‘The?’

  ‘Highways Agency.’ She flashed the ID, her finger over the bit that said ‘ACPO Delegate’.

  ‘The council, you mean?’

  ‘Yup.’

  Something in Ruth Lindermilk’s face changed. ‘About the letters?’

  ‘The . . . ? Yes. Can I come in?’

  Ruth Lindermilk glanced up and down the lane to see if they were being watched. ‘Are you on your own? No one else with you?’

  ‘No one else. Just me. Can I come in?’

  She hesitated. She gave Flea another once-over, taking in the T-shirt, the combats. Then, with a grunt, she let the door swing open. Flea stepped inside. Mrs Lindermilk slammed the door and headed away down the narrow little corridor. It was dark here. Flea followed the ghostly white blob of the woman’s cap, keeping her neck slightly bent because she sensed the ceilings might get suddenly low, like at home. There was a smell in the house, a mixture of dinners cooked long ago and alcohol. Not whisky. Something sweeter than that. Rum with mixers, maybe.

  ‘I’m like a snake.’ Mrs Lindermilk stopped in the dark, breathing harshly. A faint light filtered from under a door ahead. ‘A fuckin’ snake.’

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘Like a snake in an aquarium. They’d all come and peer at me if they could. Peer and point. The wankers. Only interested in making my life difficult. Now, you never made no appointment so you take me as you find me. OK?’

  ‘Fine.’

  Ruth Lindermilk opened the door to reveal a large, dishevelled room. The french windows at the far end were hung with vertical blinds, but they stood slightly ajar and a small fan of sunlight came through, illuminating the crowded furniture: chairs, small tables and lumpy armchairs. Magazines, paperbacks and miniatures crammed the shelves – bad copies of Dresden shepherdesses, fat children in bonnets kissing, horses rearing, cats sleeping. Every piece of wall space was covered with framed photographs of different shapes and sizes. In the corner the TV flickered: QVC. A hefty blonde girl in hotpants was struggling to balance on a gym ball. Through the small gap in the blinds Flea could see the shiny eyepiece of the telescope on the patio outside.

  ‘That’s it. Feast your eyes. This is how I am and I ain’t making any apologies.’ Mrs Lindermilk pottered around, switching on lights, shooing cats off chairs. ‘Sit down. Sit down.’ She indicated a sofa at the other end of the room. Now Flea could see her better she saw she was stout. Dressed in white shorts and a pink polo shirt with an anchor insignia on the breast, she had short, muscular legs jammed into stiletto sandals, with narrow ankles and hardened calves like a man’s. Her thin hair under the jaunty cap was worn short and dyed an anaemic ochre red. ‘Push the cats off. Sit down or die standing. It’s your choice.’

  Flea looked at the sofa. Two long-haired tabbies were curled among a pile of stuffed toys. Under them the leather was dry and split with a salty stain across it that looked like sweat or sea water. She moved the toys and sat next to the cats. One made a small grunt and wriggled closer into its partner. She felt the warmth against her leg and liked the comfort of it.

  ‘A drink? S’pose you want a drink?’

  A black glass and chrome bar stood in the corner, coloured tumblers balanced on their rims, a gold ice bucket, mixers lined up. Flea took stock of the bottles of spirits at the back. ‘Yes.’ She put her cap on the arm of the chair. ‘I’ll have what you’re having.’

  Mrs Lindermilk wiped her hands on her shirt and went to the bar. She upended two tumblers, put her hand on a bottle of Bacardi, stopped and gave Flea a sickly smile, as if to say, You almost caught me. Almost. Not quite. ‘Coke, then,’ she said. She got two cans from under the bar, snapped off the ring pulls and poured. Gave one to Flea.

  ‘Mrs Lindermilk—’

  ‘Ruth. You can call me Ruth, if you want.’

  ‘OK, Ruth. Is there a Mr Lindermilk?’

  ‘Was.’ She took her drink and settled into a worn recliner next to a rickety occasional table on which lay a remote control and an ashtray. Her bare legs in the heels were tanned, and sinewy, blackish clusters of spider veins dotted up and down them. ‘It’s just me and Stevie now.’

  ‘Your son?’

  ‘Yeah – that’s him.’ She nodded to the walls. Some of the framed photographs were of boats. One or two showed a much younger Ruth at the helm, wearing her jaunty cap next to a grey-haired man in a Hawaiian shirt. Another showed a younger man, in a white wife-beater and baseball cap with an anchor insignia, at the helm of a small boat, gazing straight into the camera. His hair was thick and blond, and he was very tanned, but there was something closed about his mouth that stopped him being good-looking. ‘Got his own business now. Doing well for himself, our Stevie.’

  ‘Ruth, the police came a few years back. You and one of the neighbours?’

  ‘How the hell do you know about that?’

  ‘We have access to that sort of thing.’

  ‘It wasn’t me who started it. Have you got access to that part? Eh?’

  ‘It didn’t say.’

  ‘Well, it was his fault. He was poisoning the squirrels. He knew my cats might eat the poison, knew it would wind me up. And it did. He got what was coming.’

  ‘You pulled a gun on him?’

  ‘A BB gun. Not exactly an AK47, is it?’

  ‘It’s still a gun. Could do a lot of harm.’

  Ruth Lindermilk held up her hand. ‘No. You’re not going to discredit me. No effing way are you going to come in here without an appointment and try to discredit me.’

  ‘OK, OK.’ Flea kept her voice level. She wanted to look up at the telescope but she focused her eyes on Ruth. ‘I’m not trying to discredit you. I’m really not. I’m trying to build a picture of your situation.’

  ‘How much more of a picture do you want? You’ve got the letters I wrote you, haven’t you?’

  ‘Yes. I . . . Do you spend a lot of time watching the road?’

  ‘Most nights.’

  ‘What time do you go to bed?’

  ‘Late.’

  ‘When you say late?’

  She shifted in her chair. ‘Are you here to help me or not?’ She raised her eyebrows challengingly. ‘Hmmm?’

  Flea’s eyes went to the glass she was holding. Ruth Lindermilk was absently sloshing the Coke around in it with a circular motion. The way you would if there was booze in it. This was going to be uphill all the way. But the drink. She definitely had a drink problem. It might be useful for them. ‘Can I have a look through the camera?’ she asked. ‘The telescope?’

  Lindermilk didn’t answer. She went on studying Flea thoughtfully. Her eyes went to the combats again. To the ID tucked inside her T-shirt.

  ‘Ruth? The camera?’

  She smiled. ‘Of course you can have a look.’

  She stood and opened the french windows. They stepped out into a day that had exploded into light. Sun was bouncing off the dew in the grass, the trees. One or two cats followed them, dropped on to the drying patio and lay blinking. Flea stood on tiptoe and squinted into the camera viewfinder. It was trained on the road below. Not on the site of the accident, but further up nearer where she’d left the car. She clicked the button on to ‘quick view’ and scrolled. There were only twenty or so photos, showing ca
ts, a sunset, a badger eating cat food, all of which looked to have been taken in the back garden. There were no pictures of her just now, standing next to the Clio on the road.

  Flea switched the camera back to photo mode, stepped sideways and put her eye to the telescope. It was trained on the road too.

  ‘Know how to use it?’ Ruth Lindermilk said.

  ‘Yes. The focus is here, right?’

  ‘It’s a good one. A nautical one. The neighbours hate me using it.’

  Flea made a show of getting the adjustments right. She moved the telescope, letting it scan the hillside above the rapeseed field, down the track that went up the side, along the edge of the road. She moved it slightly to the right. Hit something pink.

  She looked up. Ruth Lindermilk had walked a few paces on to the lawn and was standing with her hands on her hips, grinning at the telescope. There was a chipped tooth at the top of her mouth, next to the canine. ‘Get a good look?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Notice anything?’

  ‘Just you. In the way.’

  ‘But anything special about me? Go on – tell me what you noticed.’

  That you’re mad? That you’re an alcoholic? ‘What am I supposed to notice?’

  ‘That I’m not fuckin’ stupid.’ She came back to the telescope and pulled it away from Flea, snapping on the lens cover. ‘That’s what you’re supposed to notice.’

  ‘I’m just trying to do my job, Mrs Lindermilk.’

  ‘No, you’re not. You’re not trying to do your job because you’re not from the fuckin’ council. You’re not from the Highways Agency and not from the council, either.’

  ‘Of course I am.’

  ‘Do you think I was born yesterday? It’s them’s sent you, isn’t it?’ She turned, gesturing at the hamlet. ‘Neighbours ganging up on me, wanting to get a spy of my house. Go on – say it. Say, “Yes, they sent me.”’

  ‘I told you. I’m from the council.’

  ‘Well, if you are, you’re not from the department that wants to help me. You’re from bleedin’ environmental health, aren’t you?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Then tell me about the letters I sent. When was the last one? What was the date?’

  ‘I handle several cases like this a week. I can’t remember exact dates.’

  ‘Then tell me what the letters are about.’

  ‘The road.’

  ‘What about the road?’

  Flea put her hands in her pockets, stood on tiptoe and looked at the horizon.

  ‘If you’re really from the council you’ll tell me why I’m interested in the road.’

  Flea dropped back on to her heels, and turned her eyes to meet the other woman’s. ‘I don’t know,’ she admitted. ‘Just don’t know.’

  ‘Jesus fuckin’ wept.’

  ‘Tell me what you’ve seen down there. That’s what I want to know.’

  Ruth Lindermilk grabbed the tripod, collapsed it, tucked the bits under her arm, took them to the french windows and put them inside the room. ‘Go on, get out of here. Want to see your hiney heading down that path right now.’

  ‘Just tell me what you’ve been watching.’

  But Ruth Lindermilk had crossed over. ‘No. No fuckin’ way. Now get the hell out of here before I call the police.’

  30

  When Caffery woke, stiff and cold, to find the campsite deserted, just a mottled dead fire to prove the Walking Man had been there, the first thing that came into his head was Benjy: that damned dog of Lucy Mahoney’s. It had been in his dreams: a skinless dog in a body-bag on a vet’s table. The smell, and the shelled-egg stare of its eyes. Mallows said the Tanzanian brothers hated dogs: would-n’t go near them. In Africa the dog was often considered a pest. There was plenty in the literature about muti using parts from endangered species, but nothing about dogs. So, had it been kids who skinned the dog? Or Amos Chipeta? And, if it was Chipeta, then, why? As Caffery tinkered around, rolling up the mattress and sluicing his mouth out with water from a bottle, he decided he wanted to know more about what had happened the night of Lucy Mahoney’s suicide.

  He called Wells police station and when he arrived an hour later the property clerk was already waiting for him, pen in hand for him to sign out item eight, three mortise keys and a Yale, from the detained-property register. Beatrice Foxton had pronounced Lucy Mahoney a suicide and so, technically speaking, all the personal effects from the post-mortem were under the auspices of the coroner’s office. But the clerk agreed no one would miss any of them for a few hours.

  Lucy had lived in a new development on the edge of Westburysub-Mendip. Caffery drove past row upon row of brick-built starter flats and maisonettes, tiny front lawns, empty driveways that, by night, would fill with Mazdas and low-end Peugeots, because this was a place for workers, not families. Lucy’s was a downstairs maisonette. Two dustbins and a recycling wheelie with ‘32’ painted on it in white stood outside a little porch. As he put the key into the lock he could see through the pane the takeaway food circulars on the floor. Domino’s, Chilli’s Curry, the Thai House.

  He glanced over his shoulders, then stepped inside, not switching on the light. He stood behind the door and pulled on blue plastic bootees, and a pair of nitrile gloves. He closed the door, opened the inner one and padded through.

  The living room was dark and cluttered. Not what you’d expect when you were looking at the place from the outside. A new Dell LCD monitor, a scanner and a digital camera stood on a desk in the corner, but everything else was worn, a little battered. A threadbare Turkish rug on the floor, embroidered cushions scattered around, furniture painted with flowers and vines. Every surface was crammed with wood carvings, aromatherapy bottles, Nepalese painted papier-mâché, a faded sculpture of a wading bird that looked Asian. Tacked on to the living room was a little dining area and beyond that a kitchen with hand-painted tiles above the sink. The curtains were pulled back from the large window to show distant hills. Glastonbury Tor was out there – a little blip on the horizon.

  He went around the few rooms, peering at things, trying to get a feel for the place. Lucy was the collecting type. Paperweights seemed to be her thing. Paperweights with flowers in them. Paperweights with volcano bursts of red and orange. Paperweights with tiny, almost translucent shells set at angles. The place was clean, though – cleaner than it had a right to be. Weird, he told himself, looking at the kitchen. Weirdly clean. Nothing to start a parade over – sometimes suicides spring-cleaned the place before downing the co-proxamol. Even so, this cleanliness felt odd, out of whack. Suddenly, out of nowhere, he remembered something Stuart Pearce the search adviser had said: Lucy Mahoney’s suicide had broken all the rules.

  He went upstairs and switched on a light. Three doors opened on to the landing. One was a bathroom tiled in dark blue, a resin toilet seat embedded with seashells, and two pairs of thick striped tights hanging from the shower-curtain rail to dry. The dog team would have left those behind because there’d be no scent on them. They’d have gone instead for pyjamas, underwear: stuff taken out of the laundry basket. The second door was locked. He rattled it. It wasn’t moving. He went downstairs and ferreted through the drawers for keys, then checked the coat rack in the hallway. Nothing. He went back upstairs and lay on the landing carpet with his face close to the gap. Closed his mouth and breathed in the air coming from under the door.

  Perfume. Perfume and joss-sticks. And something else. Turps, maybe. The room would have been unlocked by the search teams when they came through here looking for her when she first went missing. Someone must have come and locked it since. Lucy’s ex, maybe. He’d been listed as next of kin because her parents were dead.

  The last door was the bedroom. Green velvet curtains, crystals and doeskin dream-catchers hung in the windows, and sequined belly-dance shawls had been draped over lamps – as if she’d had a lover recently. He went to the window and studied the photo in the frame on the sill: a little girl at a fête, wearing a wide-brimmed black
straw hat, her arms around an old-fashioned rag doll. This would be Daisy, the daughter. The property clerk at Wells had said the Mahoneys had had a daughter – that she was staying somewhere near Gloucester with the ex-husband and mother-in-law.

  There was a noise at the bottom of the stairs, a faint clunk and a shuffling. Caffery picked up the heaviest paperweight he could find and went out on to the landing. He stood in the doorway, weighing it in his hand and counting in his head.

  A light went on in the porch. The door opened and a face appeared at the bottom of the stairs. It was the ex-husband, rumpled in a suit that looked as if it belonged on an insurance salesman. He blinked up at Caffery, at his hands in the nitrile gloves and the paperweight. Then he looked down at Caffery’s booteed feet. ‘And who are you again?’

  ‘DI Caffery.’ He came down the stairs. ‘We spoke yesterday at the hospital. I can’t remember your name either.’

  ‘Colin Mahoney.’

  ‘What’re you doing here?’

  ‘Picking up the post.’

  ‘You’re divorced.’

  ‘We were still friends. Didn’t know there was a law against being friends with your ex. They told me I wasn’t going to hear anything else until the inquest.’

  ‘No one’s been in touch, then? No one from F District?’

  ‘No. Should they?’

  ‘Have they told you about the dog yet?’

  ‘Yes. He fell in the quarry. Apparently.’

  ‘That must have been hard. Hard to take.’

  ‘Yeah. Well, sometimes life kicks you in the face. And when it does your teeth fall out.’

  Mahoney walked into the sitting room and sat down. He put his hands on his knees and looked around, as if there might be an answer to something in the walls of the crowded room. Caffery followed him in and stood in front of him.

  ‘Here.’ He handed him some gloves. ‘Try not to touch anything.

  Mahoney took them. ‘Which unit did you say you worked for again?’

  ‘I didn’t. Major Crime Investigation Unit.’

  ‘Major Crime? That’s the murder unit?’