Skin

  He licked his palm, pushed it through his hair and buttoned his jacket. The house had two entrances, one a blue-painted front door to the left, which looked as if it went into the main house. No one answered when he rang this bell so he went to the other entrance, where the house had been extended into a low-roofed building running out at an angle. The stone extension had shuttered casement windows, a narrow portico, and a small porch with an antique foot-scraper built at the left-hand side. He rang the bell. Waited, looking at the brass sign screwed to the front door: Georges Gerber FRCS (Plast) engraved in ornate script.

  No answer. He went along the side of the house, glancing into the windows as he went. At the end he stopped. The shutters were closed. He got his Swiss Army Hiker from his pocket and prised off the catch. Pulled the shutter wide.

  About ten centimetres into the room, a breezeblock wall had been constructed. He put his nose to the glass. The wall stretched up as far as he could see, and out to the sides as far as he could see. There was an airbrick about six blocks to his right.

  Oh, goody, he thought, smiling against the pane. Oh, goody, Mr Gerber, I smell your blood.

  59

  In South-east London there had been long, complex issues around stop-and-search laws. When Caffery was a PC, his inspector had adopted a head-in-the-sand solution to the problem and thrown most of his manpower into meeting quotas on other crime. Breaking and entering fell to Caffery. In two short months he’d learnt a lot about the clever ways people had of getting into other folk’s houses.

  He drove six miles down the road to a village ironmonger’s and got some of the things he needed. The rest Gerber had generously provided: in the unlocked maintenance shed near the pool. Didn’t people know about locking sheds? Hadn’t it sunk in yet? You were just as likely to have your shed burgled as your house. Hey, Georges, he thought, it’s difficult to comprehend this slack attitude to security. He carried the stepladder and the power drill to the side of the house so that he was hidden from the road. He would hear a car on that lane from miles away. There’d be time to hide the tools if anyone appeared.

  Whatever Gerber was getting up to in that strong-room he wouldn’t be wanting a key-holder or the police rolling in if the alarm ever went off. Which meant that the system probably wouldn’t be connected to a control centre, and was probably designed just to unnerve an intruder. Even so, Caffery chose a point about ten metres from the house and snipped the telephone wire. He carried the ladder back to the house, fitted a 9 mm bit in the drill chuck, climbed to the alarm box and made a hole in the ‘T’ of the company name, right where the print was at its darkest so it wouldn’t be visible from a distance. He shook a canister of expanding foam, eased the nozzle into the hole and filled the interior of the box until the face plate made a low noise and popped out a little. He placed a square of black gaffer tape across the strobe unit, climbed back down and returned the stepladder to the shed.

  The house and the grounds were silent. Not a single car or truck or motorbike had passed on the lane the whole time he’d been there. Things could happen out here and no one would know. To the left of the front door there was a small window with pebbled glass that looked as if it belonged to a toilet. He gaffer-taped the top vent and smashed it with the butt of the drill. Reached in, undid the latch on the big window. Climbed through, on to the toilet lid, jumped down and went out into a flagstoned corridor.

  Somewhere in here would be the internal box. When it let go, the noise would be mind-numbing. He had maybe ten seconds left.

  He came to what looked like an office, oak-panelled with plush carpets and tasselled, floor-length curtains. The furniture was classic but not especially elegant: an ornately tooled mahogany desk with a green-leather inset, a button-tufted Queen Anne sofa, large gilt-framed oil landscapes adorning the walls. The windows looked out towards the swimming-pool. No alarm box. He carried on, passing a kitchenette, a boot room with wellingtons lined up and Barbours hanging on pegs. He came to a second corridor, sunlight falling through the windows on to an expensive walnut floor. More than ten seconds had passed and there hadn’t been a noise. But now he could see the box at the end of the corridor, mounted above a padlocked solid oak door.

  The light unit wasn’t flashing. No klaxon either. Infrared eyes blinked at him from both sides of the ceiling and the door had two contact sensors, one on either side. He realized the klaxon wasn’t sounding because the alarm wasn’t designed to go off at an intrusion into the house. It was designed to protect the breeze-block room and only that room.

  He went to the box. Broke the infrared beams and instantly the strobe unit began to blink. The circuit board usually sat just behind and above the battery – it was best to destroy them both. He put the drill bit against the box and leant into it. Curled swarf flew everywhere as the bit popped easily through the door, deeper into the workings. The drill jumped in his hands, clattering around in the box, causing havoc. The klaxon started and wailed deafeningly for two seconds before the drill bit found circuitry. It leapt around some more, doing its work, then the wailing died abruptly.

  Silence. Ears ringing, he jiggled the chain and tried the door. It wasn’t only protected by the padlock – there were four more deadbolts in the door. He went back into the office and opened all the drawers on the desk. The top one was locked so he used the drill again. He didn’t much care what Powers would think about the damages Gerber might claim – he was already in a world of trouble and disciplinaries with what he’d done to the alarm box. In for a penny, in for a pound.

  The keys were in the drawer and they fitted the four locks. Another lecture in effective security coming your way, Mr Gerber. The padlock came off easily – a thirty-second squirt of pipe freeze, a crowbar inserted, given the right torque, and it shattered into four pieces. He opened the door.

  As soon as he stepped inside the darkened room he smelt something bad. Something he knew from the mortuary and from undertakers. Something that made his throat close. Formalin.

  He closed the door behind him, locking it for good measure. He could make out shapes in the half-light: a bank of floor-to-ceiling refrigerators to his left, a massive workbench to his right, like in an old-fashioned school laboratory. In the far wall a door stood slightly ajar. He went to it and peered round. It led to a small enclosed stairwell twisting up into daylight. He listened, heard nothing above him, so he pulled the door closed, locked that too, and switched on the overhead light.

  It was a fluorescent strip and too bright for the size of the room, as if work went on in here that you’d need good visibility for. The refrigerators lined the wall to his right. In front of him the wall was decorated with medical diagrams, all showing the skin in varying styles: one depicted the body’s sweat glands, representing them in red on a black-and-grey genderless outlined human. Another showed skin lifted up on a hook to reveal its interior, the dermis, epidermis, the subcutaneous fat, hair erector muscles and blood vessels.

  But it was what was on the work station in his peripheral vision that really sent a line of adrenalin through him.

  Tools and racks laid out on the bench in a clear pattern as if they were expecting something. Some he recognized as a tanner’s – skinning and fleshing knives, a small gambrel – others he’d never seen before. They looked like specialized surgeon’s tools. In the centre there was a series of blocks with pegs in them. The sort of thing you’d stretch out an animal skin on.

  Animal skin.

  The skinned dog in the quarry definitely hadn’t been Amos Chipeta.

  I’m getting near you now, my friend. I can feel you. I’m not far now.

  He took a few steps forward and opened a refrigerator. It gave with a gentle vacuumy hiss, cold air coming out at him. He peered inside. Every shelf was crammed with vacuutainers: like the Tupperware sandwich boxes his mum used to put his and Ewan’s lunch in when they were kids. Each was labelled and through the sides he could see brown liquid, rocking lightly from the movement of his opening the door.
/>
  He pulled one out. It was cold, slightly sticky, the smell of formalin coming from it. Taped to the top was a photo of a young woman. First off he thought she was dead. She was lying on her back – the camera had shot her from above, the way they sometimes shot corpses in the mortuary – and she wore a mask strapped over her mouth and nose. She was naked, except for a bandage across her breasts and a tangle of flower-sprigged cotton bunched at her knees. Her eyes were closed, but she had too much colour to be dead. He looked at the fabric: an operating-theatre gown. The bed was a hospital bed. She wasn’t dead: she was under anaesthetic. Maybe just coming out because that wasn’t a laryngeal mask on her face.

  Under the photograph was a printed box, intricate lines of text in it: ‘Name: Pauline Weir. DOB: 4.5.81. Op date: 15.7.08. Op: Breast reduction.’ Below the text was a diagram of a female – a little like the one on the wall. Two semicircles in red pen were sketched on the undersides of the breasts.

  Caffery carried the container to the table and opened it carefully. Seven or eight slivers of skin in the clear brown fluid floated. Like an exhibit in a medical museum.

  He clicked the lid shut, went back to the fridge, pulled out another. Another photograph of a woman on a bed, naked except for the gown that had been pulled down to her knees, and a bandage across her stomach. No anaesthetist would leave a patient’s side while they were unconscious, but they wouldn’t supervise the recovery period past a certain point: that would be left to trained recovery nurses who might be persuaded to leave the room. If they were instructed to by the surgeon. Was that what Susan Hopkins had meant by They’re all a bit thick, the recovery nurses, not to see what’s going on under their noses?

  He opened the container. In it he found a single elliptical piece of skin, bleached and puckered by the formalin. He returned it, ran his fingers down the list of containers until he came to the M section. Mahoney, Lucy. He carried it to the table, opened it, and there he saw the last piece of the puzzle.

  A piece of Lucy that hadn’t made it to the autopsy table. A piece of her pubis. The hairs were still attached.

  For years and years and years this had been Gerber’s secret.

  For years, by a series of crafty moves, in ways that would never be detected, he had been stealing the skin of the women he operated on.

  60

  Caffery heard the car coming from a distance. He shut the vacuutainers away and left the room silently, clicking the door closed behind him. He kicked aside the metal swarf and was stepping out of the front door as an immaculate blue Mercedes swept up the drive. A 500 AMG with all the bells and whistles.

  He didn’t know if he’d been seen coming out so he stepped away from the building into the sunlight. The Mercedes came to a halt. There were a few moments’ pause, then the door opened and a small man with greying hair got out. He was about fifty, unremarkable, except for the odd tunic he wore. Yoked and made of brushed denim, it was the sort of thing an artist might have worn in the 1970s. There were damp spots on the front.

  ‘Georges Gerber?’

  He glanced towards the road, then back at Caffery. ‘Who wants to know?’

  He held up his card. ‘Inspector Jack Caffery.’

  There was a slight pause. Gerber closed his eyes. And opened them. As if he was taking a picture of Jack. Then his face cleared abruptly. ‘Where are my manners?’ He pushed his hair back from his face with a chalk-white hand. ‘Do come in.’ He slammed the car door and took out a key, came forward and opened the front door wide. Smiled. ‘I’ll make you some coffee.’

  Caffery pocketed his card and followed. While Gerber went to the corner of his office and busied himself with a coffee-maker Caffery stood next to a winged armchair, shifting it slightly so he could keep three things in plain view: Gerber, who had pressed two sachets into the machine and was now filling the cups, and the two doors – the one he’d come through and the other, which led to the refrigerator room where the padlock lay snapped on the floor.

  ‘So,’ Gerber said pleasantly, as he turned with the coffee, ‘you found me easily enough. How long have you been here?’

  ‘I just arrived.’ Caffery gave him a cool smile. ‘Why?’

  ‘A polite enquiry,’ he said lightly. ‘Simply making conversation.’

  He put a coaster on to a little occasional table next to the chair and set the coffee on it. When he straightened Caffery noticed he was sweating. Nothing too obvious, just a faint sheen across his forehead. ‘My father was in the force. A chief inspector – Hampshire.’

  ‘Really?’

  Why haven’t you asked me why I’m here yet? When are you going to ask?

  ‘I feel I’ve got an affinity with the police.’ Gerber pulled up a small table next to the sofa and put down his own cup. He went back to the coffee-maker and stood for a moment with his back to Caffery, opening a packet of biscuits. Something with a royal crest on the box. He shook them out on to a plate. ‘Fixing things. You know. Making the world a better place. Biscuit?’

  ‘No, thank you.’

  ‘Drink your coffee.’

  ‘When I’m ready.’

  The last thing Caffery was going to do was eat or drink anything in this place. No other incapacitants had come up on the tox results because Gerber was a doctor and had access to the liquid form of temazepam. He could have slipped it to the women in a drink – they wouldn’t have noticed. Knowing it would come up on toxicology, and that using a liquid temazepam that Lucy hadn’t been prescribed might point to murder and maybe to someone in the medical profession, he’d fed them pills later to account for the tranquillizer in the blood result.

  ‘Is there something wrong with your coffee?’

  ‘You tell me, Mr Gerber. Is there something wrong with it?’

  Gerber went still. He turned swiftly to Caffery. Something off centre had crept into his eyes. The spots on his smock were still dark. If they were water, Caffery thought, they’d be dry by now. ‘S-sorry,’ he murmured. ‘Is that a riddle?’

  ‘No. It’s a straightforward question. Is there something in my coffee? Liquid benzos, for example.’

  ‘What?’ Gerber put his hand to his forehead. ‘Goodness – this is confusing. You’re confusing me.’

  ‘I haven’t just arrived, Georges. I’ve been here for a long time. Enough time to go into your room. See what you’ve been up to.’

  Gerber dropped the biscuits. They scattered on the table, some on the floor. He stood with his hands limp at his sides, making no attempt to pick the biscuits up. ‘There’s an explanation,’ he said woodenly. ‘I can explain everything you’ve seen.’

  ‘I can explain too. Lucy Mahoney caught you, didn’t she? She saw what you were doing. Saw what you’d taken from her. Or did she remember being photographed? Was that it?’

  ‘This is a fantasy you’re having. Some sort of fantasy. If you let me explain I’ll—’

  ‘She was blackmailing you. And then what happened? My guess is she asked for too much. She wanted to buy herself a house – her demands got too big. There was no way out for you. You’re a thief. For years, by the looks of things, you’ve been stealing skin, like a serial killer who takes a part of his victims. These women have been your victims.’

  ‘Victims?’ He raised his eyes to Caffery. ‘That’s a harsh word. I didn’t hurt one of them. They left my surgery better than they came in.’

  ‘They are victims. They didn’t consent.’

  ‘The skin – it’s part of my life’s work. I s-study skin. I’m trying to build synthetic skin.’

  ‘Building synthetic skin?’ Caffery laughed. ‘Oh, good one, Dr Frankenstein.’

  ‘It’s the truth. Have another look in that room. You’ll see the boxes. From other manufacturers.’

  ‘I’m not stupid, Mr Gerber. From the limited knowledge I have, I’d say what you’re doing is nothing about building synthetic skin or whatever bullshit you’re asking me to swallow. I’d say it’s nothing to do with that and everything to do with sex.’
r />   Gerber’s face went blank for a moment. He blinked.

  ‘I’d say that, whatever it looks like on the surface, this sort of behaviour always has a sexual motivation. Where’s your problem, Georges? You can’t get it up? Or did your mother make you give her bedbaths when you were six?’

  Gerber blinked again. Once, twice. Three times in succession.

  ‘You photographed those women naked. God only knows what else you did to them while they were still half under. And you kept trophies to remind you. I looked at those – those specimens – and I couldn’t help asking myself: If I tested them would I find traces of your semen on them?’

  Gerber stopped blinking. His left hand opened and closed as if he wanted to touch something. He came towards the table where he’d put the cup of coffee. ‘No wonder you’re not drinking your coffee. The table’s too far away.’

  ‘It’s fine where it is.’

  ‘Here.’ He bent to pick it up. ‘Let me just move it along.’

  ‘I said it’s fine where it—’

  A spasm hit the back of Caffery’s calf and bolted up his body. He rolled away, a shout coming out of his mouth, scrambling across the sofa, fumbling for the back of his leg. He got clumsily to his feet, knocking over a chair, and turned, panting, to see Gerber, half bent over next to the table, his head at a slight angle, watching him. There was a weapon in his hand. It looked like a small pick or an awl – the sort of thing you’d use to work leather. A piece of material clung to it, from Caffery’s trousers, and long loops of blood lay across the cushions where he’d just scrambled over the sofa.

  ‘Why didn’t you drink my coffee, you fucking shithead?’

  ‘Hey,’ Caffery panted, reaching down to hold his leg, finding ripped fabric and something else – shredded calf muscle. ‘You are so fucked you just don’t have a clue.’

  With his free hand he grabbed the chair and took a limping step forward, swinging it at Gerber, who sidestepped, nimble as a dancer, and landed the heel of the awl across Caffery’s temple. The pain pushed something black into his head. He fell forward, grabbing at things as he went, seeing the legs of the sofa fly up to meet him.