Skin

  The floor sloped upwards. She was entering a chimney: a narrow tube about four feet wide heading vertically. Undeviating. The beam showed it was one straight ascent, the sides smooth, almost as if they’d been machine cut. She forced herself to take a brief decompression stop – breathing slowly, picturing the nitrogen fizzing out of her muscles. The clock numbers tumbled round. Six minutes. It would have to do. She filled her jacket with air and entered, one hand raised above her.

  The expanding gas in the system lifted her fast. The walls whirred past, streaks of black limestone. Up and up and up, the long bore sucking the circle of light ahead of her, like a dream, look after yourself thudding in her ears with every heartbeat. Until at last, unexpectedly, she surged out of the top. Into air.

  It was dark. She fumbled one elbow over the side of the chimney, breathing hard. Held herself level, only her face at the surface. Her legs she wedged in place, keeping her shoulder near the edge. If anything came at her she’d ram the dump valve against the rock, offload the air from her suit and drop straight back down the chimney. She concentrated on her breathing. In and out. In and out.

  Almost a minute passed. No hands grabbed her head. No face appeared in front of her mask. Tentatively she lifted the light out of the water and aimed it in front of her. The beam floundered in the darkness and hit rock about twenty feet away – a mossed, dripping rockface. She moved the beam to her left: more rock. No mist, no moon, no trees. Instead, when she turned it skywards, the light found a roof almost forty feet above. The rumours had been true. She’d come out in one of the old lead caves.

  There’d been accidental deaths in other UK dive units and after those it had been drummed into her in training: never take the mask off. Not until you know what the air’s like. She inched herself up with her feet, pulling herself out so she was kneeling astride the hole, sitting on her heels, tensed, the torch rammed out in front of her like a weapon, all the time ready to drop straight back into the chimney. Slowly, with her free hand, she lifted the mask webbing away from her ear, tipped her head to one side, held her breath and listened.

  Something was breathing. Somewhere in the darkness. Hiding in the rocks.

  She lifted the mask. Sniffed. Tasted the air. Waited. It was clean. Damp and full of the smells of water and rotting leaves. But clean. She looped the mask on one wrist so it was ready to pull back on, and put the fingers of her right hand on the floor. Leg muscles screaming, she tipped forward a bit and trained the flashlight on the sound.

  The beam hit black rock and slithered around. Then, wedged between a crevice, something glinted. Eyes. Elliptical, set straight and level about three feet above the ground. Human eyes, but yellow and polluted. Staring at her. They blinked in the light and then, for a second, a large hand came up to shield them. Now she could judge the size of his head. It was anvil-shaped, the jaw too big, the neck squashed, almost non-existent. She could see the protruding tops of the ribcage, the way the bones looked too big. Could hear laboured breathing. Not an elf. Not a troll or a pixie or a gnome. Not a Tokoloshe. This was a human being. Wearing a threadbare sweatshirt and shorts, mashed-up flip-flops on his feet. She held herself steady. Held herself calm.

  ‘I’m police. Don’t move. Don’t come near me.’

  The eyes blinked.

  ‘You take one step towards me and you’ll find yourself in the biggest shit fight you could imagine. OK?’

  A hesitation. Then he nodded.

  She pushed herself upright. Faced him squarely.

  ‘Amos. You’re Amos. Have you been following me?’

  He shook his head.

  ‘What about that day in the squat last week? The day we broke in?’ She ran the back of her wrist across her mouth to clean away the taste of the quarry. ‘There was me and another officer. A man. In plain clothes.’

  Silence. The eyes regarded her carefully, and now she glimpsed something else in the torchlight. A glimmer of plastic – storage containers, white plastic. The sort of thing you’d see in a teenager’s bedroom. Four, maybe five, stacked one on top of another. Then she saw more belongings. Smelt something burning. Saw a battered sleeping-bag. And it struck her that he was living here. Here, in the dark among the moss and the rotting leaves and the dead insects, he was trying to carve out an existence.

  ‘I don’t know who you are, but you’re not from England. You’re African. From Tanzania.’

  The eyes stayed steady. Gazed at her. Waited for her to continue.

  ‘You’re illegal. And you’re in serious shit. Here and back home too.’ She moved her tongue around, tried to coax some saliva into her mouth. ‘I could make that shit deeper. I’ll do it if I have to.’

  The head must have tilted a little, because the angle of the eyes changed. They were still focused on her, but the breathing had altered too. It was softer. Deeper and slower. She couldn’t tear her gaze away from those eyes. Watching her. Not blinking.

  ‘I’m going to give you something now. You’ll understand when you see what it is. You’re going to sort it and you’re never going to speak about it again. You try and turn it back on me and you’ll regret it. I know what the police will look for so I’ve done some things to the . . .’

  She had to break off and press her fingertips to her throat to stop her voice wavering. The compressed air was making her throat dry.

  ‘I’ve done some things to the body that’ll stop them tracing her to me. If you try to go to the police they’ll think it was you who killed her. But . . .’ she had to pause again, get her voice in control ‘. . . if you do this properly, with respect, I’ll find a way to help you. I don’t know how but I will. I’ll find ways to protect you. It’s a simple thing. A straight swap.’

  For a moment the little man was motionless. Then, his movement barely perceptible, he lifted his head and lowered it. He was nodding.

  She wiped her nose and took a deep breath. ‘Good. That was all I needed to say.’

  She lifted her mask, pulled the webbing down over her wet hair, letting the visor sit on top of her head. Putting her hands on the floor she crouched down next to the chimney mouth, swung her legs round and dropped them into the water. She waited a moment or two, holding the man’s gaze. ‘One more thing.’

  His eyes lifted a little. Questioning.

  ‘I’m sorry. Very sorry.’

  Then she pulled up her mask and was gone, lost in a burr of bubbles that broke and spat in the darkness.

  71

  In the car outside Lindermilk’s bungalow Caffery washed down the hospital tramadol and codeine with a can of Sprite Lite. Given time, the drugs might touch the pain, but he knew they wouldn’t send him to sleep. Too much had happened today.

  He drove to the bottom of the Farleigh Park Hall driveway and sat staring at its blazing lights for a long time, lighting cigarette after cigarette. Now it was dark the CSI team had stopped the examination of Gerber’s house. They’d start again in the morning. Maybe they should be looking for human remains, he thought. Misty Kitson’s. In the morning he’d tell them that, then go back to see Gerber’s secretary, Marsha. Misty had already had some cosmetic surgery on her nose to rebuild it after the damage done by years of hoovering up cocaine. He remembered that much from the files; the op had been done by an Iranian in Harley Street, but maybe she’d wanted more. Maybe she’d had an appointment to see Gerber. The names might be fake, people get embarrassed, one of the secretaries had said. Could you have done Misty too, you bastard? Could you?

  When he’d smoked four cigarettes he still wasn’t sleepy. He left a message on Powers’s answerphone – Call me. Something important – started the car and headed east, meaning to go home. Instead he found himself thinking again about Amos Chipeta. About what he wanted. He thought of a bracelet of human hair, meant to ward off evil. He found his car meandering, taking him into the sharp dark forest of Stockhill. At just after two a.m., instead of coming into his darkened driveway at Priddy, he pulled off the main drag and into the little lane that led to th
e Elf’s Grotto quarries.

  The headlights swept the new leaves on to the crowded gorse bushes. Obeying an instinct that told him to be stealthy, he parked the car just off the slip-road behind some skips and limped the last hundred yards to the edge of quarry number eight.

  It was a milky night, the moonlight scattering in an oppressive glow. Low clouds pressed down, holding the light close to the land. Nothing moved in the shadows, no wildlife or wind. He stood for a moment at the edge of the water, his hands on the back of his leg, checking he hadn’t opened the wound in the walk here, that it wasn’t going to start bleeding again.

  The quarry was quiet. Nothing moved. Where does he live? he wondered. Where does he hide?

  He went fifty yards round the edge to the place where Ben Jakes had been found, stopped and looked at the undergrowth. Nothing had changed. He went on, anticlockwise around the quarry, pausing every few minutes to listen to the night sounds, pushing through brambles and dead branches in the places the footpath gave out. He was almost back to where he’d found the scooter when something stopped him in his tracks.

  Ten feet away, parked in the undergrowth and covered with branches, was a car. A silver Ford Focus. It looked as if it had been there for a long time. Days, from the way it was covered. But he knew it couldn’t have been. He took a step nearer and held his hand above the bonnet. Still warm. Someone had parked it here to hide it. He turned and surveyed the quarry. The water and surrounding trees were absolutely motionless. Was someone else here? Were they watching him now? From the trees? From the other side of the quarry?

  The tramadol still wasn’t working and his pulse was moving fast as he picked his way through the undergrowth to the back of the car. He looked at the registration thoughtfully. Y reg. A Y-registration Ford Focus.

  It came to him slowly. It came like a slow wave.

  He knew whose car it was.

  Sergeant Marley was bored with the Focus, she’d said. Bored with it? He pulled his sleeve down again and tried the boot. Locked. At the quarry the day she’d found the dog, it had been the moment he’d asked her about this car that something had changed in her.

  A half-remembered thought edged at him. He stepped back from the car into the undergrowth and stared at the number plate again. He’d seen this car a few times – once was on the day they’d made the arrests for Operation Norway: it had been parked outside a remote house in the Mendips and he’d had time to study it. He narrowed his eyes, remembering: there’d been a PSU-issue kit on the back shelf and something else . . . Something important. A piece of fabric hanging from the boot. A swatch of purplish blue velvet jammed into the lock.

  In his pocket the phone began to ring. Startled him. He backed into the trees. Fishing it out of his pocket, he killed the noise as soon as he could.

  ‘Yes,’ he hissed. ‘What?’

  ‘Jack?’ It was Powers. His voice soft and oiled from a night’s drinking. ‘Got your message. I only just heard what happened. I’m sorry, mate, really sorry.’

  ‘Yeah.’ Caffery didn’t take his eyes off the car. Purple velvet. Purple velvet jammed in the boot of the fucking car. ‘Sure.’

  ‘Where are you? In the hospital? I had someone from the CSI team trying to track you down. They said you promised them your clothes when you got out of the hospital.’

  Purple velvet. Car, coat. Car, coat. Misty Kitson’s coat. Flea hadn’t wanted to search a lake for her.

  ‘And me – have you got something for me? You sounded excited. Was it about Kitson?’

  ‘Kitson.’ Caffery repeated it distantly as if he’d never heard the name before. ‘Misty Kitson.’

  ‘You said you’d have something by now. Remember?’ Powers paused. ‘Can you hear me, Jack? Look, just give me the intel you had, what your snout had to say, and we can take it from there. I’ll come to you, if you want. Now. Wherever you are.’

  Caffery didn’t answer. Still staring at the car, he took the phone away from his ear and held it at arm’s length. He let Powers speak to the air for a few seconds. Then, using his thumb, he switched the phone off. He stood like that, motionless in the darkness, his arm outstretched, heart hammering in his chest.

  There is no God, he thought. There is no such thing as God.

  72

  Looking at it now, it had been clear all along. There was so much to pin on Flea. The tics, the lapses of logic in her behaviour. He remembered Stuart Pearce at Lucy Mahoney’s body-recovery site. The traffic cop at the quarry saying that the night Kitson went missing there’d been something wrong with Flea. That she’d been distressed.

  From the quarry to his right there came a low, distinctive glooping noise – as if an animal had broken the surface. He dropped the phone into his pocket and backed away from the car, moving silently into the trees, stopping about twenty yards away where he was hidden. He waited, watching the car and the black water reflecting the clouds.

  Tiny ripples raced out across the water, as if someone had thrown a stone about three yards from the shore. The surface bulged and broke again. More ripples disturbed the cloud reflections. Someone was in the water. He moved himself further inside the shadows of the trees. More bubbles boiled up, then a head appeared: black and shiny. It was Flea, the hazy light bouncing off her diving hood.

  He wedged himself against a tree so he didn’t lose balance while he watched. She climbed up a few ladder rungs, then pulled off the mask and sat on the edge of the quarry, unsnapping the front of the harness, leaning back and lowering the cylinders to the ground. She pulled off her fins and gloves, took a moment or two to turn off the air regulator on the cylinders and got shakily to her feet. She paused for a moment, surveying the quarry, turning around and around. Her wet hair clung to her head and her small face was strained and pinched. When she was sure she was alone, she reached into a pocket in the drysuit leg, pulled out keys and headed for the car. She didn’t open the driver’s door, but went straight to the boot and opened it.

  Bending down, she wrapped her arms around a large white package. Caffery knew what it contained: he could see the yellowish smudge of bleached hair pressed to the plastic sheeting. He shuffled forward a few paces, pinching his nose hard as if that might make him come to his senses and realize this was just a dream.

  Moving slowly, clumsily, Flea dropped the body. It hit the ground with a dull thud. She slammed the boot and bent, catching up the package by two corners of the plastic sheeting. Gritting her teeth in concentration, she leant her weight back and began to drag it along the ground, pulling it out of the trees, out into the hazy, reflected moonlight, out in the direction of the water. It bumped and snagged. Once or twice he thought she wasn’t going to be able to get it out of the trees. But she was used to the lumpen weight of a dead body and she fought it. It took her ten minutes to do it, but she dragged it all the way to the edge of the quarry.

  She lowered the package close to the ladder, and straightened, digging her hands into the small of her back, circling her head to release the tension. Then something made her stiffen. She turned and looked into the trees.

  ‘Who’s there?’ She stared in his direction.

  Caffery squeezed his nostrils tighter, fighting back the urge to speak. A weight pressed up against his ribcage.

  She listened for a moment or two longer. Then, frowning, she began to reassemble her kit, pulling on the fins, leaning back to hitch up the twin tanks, snapping on the jacket.

  When she was fully kitted she climbed halfway into the water. Standing on the ladder, one arm wrapped on the rungs, she bumped the body down after her. As it tilted up Caffery could see skin, exposed through the shredded plastic. Torn skin, and muscle, and white-blonde hair.

  When Flea’d got the corpse most of the way into the water she paused. She was facing it, one arm around it.

  He thought for a moment she was thinking, trying to work out how to do what she was going to do next. Then he realized it was something else entirely. Her head was slightly down, her eyes raised. She was
looking into the blank smear that would have been Misty Kitson’s face. If it hadn’t sounded ridiculous, if it hadn’t broken all the rules after what he’d just watched her do, he’d have said she was apologizing to Misty.

  He could step out of the trees now, could stand there motionless in the moonlight, somewhere she’d see him. But before he could do anything she pulled up her mask, wriggled it around her ears, wrapped both arms tightly around the corpse and dropped like a stone out of sight into the dark mirror of the quarry, taking it with her.

  Surprised it had happened so quickly, he limped out of the bushes and stood in the pool of water her equipment had left, peering down. Through the bubbles, he could just see the two of them – the black of Flea’s head, the frosty plastic shroud around Misty and the wavering of the torchbeam.

  Then they were gone. And all that was left were the mirrored domes of bubbles breaking on the surface.

  73

  Dawn, and Flea had drifted at last to the narrow lanes around her home. She drove steadily, eyes bloodshot, dull, the smell of the quarry still in her nostrils. A mist had come down, a grey, wreathing mist, making the twists and bends in the lanes treacherous. About half a mile from the house a hairpin bend came up fast. She slammed her foot down, wrenching the Focus to the left. The wheels flared out under her, the steering-wheel jerked in her hands, but she held it steady as the car careened around the corner of the narrow country lane, the wheels locking, going into a sideways slide. The tyres screeched, a tree hurtled towards the car. The impact, when it came, shot her forward against her seat-belt and sent pain through her ribs. The airbag inflated, slamming her head back, pushing her jaws together so fast she bit her tongue.

  A moment of shock, then the airbag deflated. Her head fell down on to her chest with a jolt.

  She sat for a moment, waiting for her ears to stop ringing from the airbag. Blood was welling in her mouth, under her tongue. She held it for a while between pursed lips as she did a mental check of her limbs, her trunk, moving her concentration down her body, along her arms and legs. Her knee hurt – she’d banged it against the steering-column – and her sternum ached where she’d strained against the seatbelt, but she could feel her toes. Could wiggle them.