Skin

  ‘It was an accident,’ he whispered. ‘An accident.’

  ‘Let me in.’

  ‘It was an accident – I didn’t mean it to happen. She just stepped out of the trees. It was a fast road. I didn’t have a chance.’

  ‘We’ve got to talk. Let me in.’

  ‘Mandy’ll be home soon.’ He pulled a handkerchief out of the top pocket of his shirt and rubbed it against his eyes, his mouth. ‘She’ll be wanting her tea . . .’

  Flea pushed open the door, stepped inside and went past him. ‘I don’t care about Mandy. We’ve got to talk. Now. Come on.’

  She walked into the sitting room with its vase of plastic flowers, its glass ornaments on the little table, everything neat, dusted and in its place – you could see the reflection in the TV screen, it was so highly polished. Not like Mum and Dad’s careless house. Thom wasn’t like a Marley at all.

  After a while, when he saw she wasn’t going to leave, he followed.

  ‘Sit down,’ she said.

  He sat obediently on the edge of the armchair. ‘Well? Are you going to dob me in?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because I’m an idiot. A soft touch. Stupid enough to give a crap about you, you useless piece of shit.’

  ‘I deserve that.’

  ‘Yes. You haven’t even got the comprehension for the can of shit you’ve opened.’

  He shifted in his chair, not meeting her eyes. He was dressed in his smart corduroy trousers, a chequered shirt under a sensible brown pullover. He was very blond and pale, and his ears stuck out just enough to give him a vaguely nerdish look. It was impossible to imagine he could have killed a woman, even accidentally, and not told someone: that he could coolly have picked her up, put her in the boot and driven all the way back to Flea’s house.

  ‘Did you know her?’

  ‘I told you, she stepped out in front of me. I was driving along and the next thing it was all over. I panicked, Flea. I just panicked.’

  ‘But you know who she is, don’t you?’

  ‘I’ve been watching the news. Every second of every day I’ve been watching it.’

  ‘Then you know they’re never going to stop looking for her. Not until hell freezes over.’

  ‘I know.’

  She sighed. ‘I can’t believe I’m having this conversation.’

  ‘I’ve got no idea, no idea, what to do next.’

  There was a taste in her mouth she didn’t think she’d ever get rid of. She sat on the sofa opposite and, arms folded, looked at him steadily. ‘OK. Here it is. Like I said, I won’t go to the police.’

  ‘No?’

  ‘No. But you will.’

  Thom sat back in his chair. He let all his breath out.

  ‘Listen.’ She held up a hand. ‘I’m going to remind you of what happened, OK? You’ve been depressed. Since Mum and Dad died you’ve been really unwell. We’ve got doctors’ records to prove it.’

  ‘I’ve been better since I’ve been with Mandy. Things were getting better.’

  ‘You’ve been depressed. And that night you borrowed my car because everything had got too much. You wanted to drive somewhere, just to get your head together. You weren’t drunk but you were crying – you admit that. Hysterical, even. You hit something on the road. At the time you thought it was an animal, but then, when you thought about it, when you saw the headlines, you started wondering if . . .’

  ‘Oh, Christ.’

  ‘Thom. It’s the only way. Your papers are all up to date, aren’t they? Your driving licence?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘My insurance is watertight for you driving and the car was in perfect nick, MOT only a month old. We’re in a strong position. We’ll get a psychiatric evaluation, plead diminished responsibility or recognized medical condition or whatever they call it these days, and there’s not a judge in this country would automatically bang you up. It’s more likely they’ll hand you a hospital order. Keep you in the psychiatric-evaluation tumble-drier until eventually the sun goes down and someone spits you out of the system.’

  Thom lifted his thin hands and massaged his temples. The veins were blue through his skin.

  ‘The first thing we’ve got to do is return the body.’

  ‘God, please, no. Not that.’

  ‘We return it to the place the accident happened. Then we leave it for a couple of days so the wildlife can get at it. We need to destroy some bits of evidence and create others. In the meantime you go off and get yourself sectioned.’

  ‘Sectioned?’

  ‘We’re going to build a psychiatric case. We’ll do some research on the best way to go about it. But first we get the body back.’ She stood. ‘Now. We’ll take your car. You’ve got to show me where.’

  He didn’t move.

  ‘She has to go back to the same place, Thom. There’ll be forensics at the scene proving it was an accident.’

  He shook his head and looked at his hands, as if he’d find an answer in the soft skin on the back. She ran her fingers tiredly down her face. ‘Now, listen to me. And you’d better listen really well. I’d do anything for you because you’re my little brother. But I can’t take away what you’re going to have to do.’ She leant forward. ‘You’re going to take me there now. Did you hear me? Do you understand?’

  He didn’t answer. In the hallway someone was unlocking the front door.

  ‘Mandy,’ he hissed. ‘Quick.’

  Flea sighed. She stood up, arms still folded, while in the hallway Mandy moved around, putting down keys, flicking through the mail on the side table. After a moment or two she came into the living room, stopping when she saw Flea and the pinched look on her face.

  Mandy was older than Thom by several years: a short, square woman who dressed in sludge-coloured linen with lots of Indian jewellery. Today she was wearing an olive green jacket and white trousers. She’d had her short hair styled and coloured: a deep dark red, almost purple, cut in a bob against her round face. In one hand she was carrying a half-open rucksack with papers and files peeping out of it. Now she set it on the floor and began slowly to unbutton her jacket, her eyes going carefully from Flea to Thom.

  ‘OK,’ she said, at last. ‘I’ve come in at a bad time.’

  There was a moment’s silence. Thom licked his lips. In spite of his reserve, he’d never been brave – he was terrified of Mandy. And she knew it. She dominated him, never letting him out of her sight, expecting him to cook and clean. She’d spent a lot of the inheritance money too, on supporting a fringe theatre group from Easton. Ordinarily she and Flea didn’t have much to say to each other.

  ‘Mandy, I was just leaving. Thom, you give me a call when you’ve had a think, will you?’

  He stared at her, the skin around his mouth faintly blue.

  ‘Thom?’ she said, meaningfully.

  His trance broke. ‘Yes,’ he muttered hurriedly. ‘I’ll call you. Later. I swear.’

  12

  A man sat near the door in the waiting room outside the mortuary. He raised his hand as Caffery came through. ‘Hi.’

  ‘Evening.’ Caffery kept walking, pulling out his phone. He wanted to see if Powers had been on with another nag about the Kitson case, but he also wanted to see if Flea had answered the call he’d made earlier. He’d liked the way she’d looked at him earlier. It had made something in him give a little. It was a good feeling – a clean, loose feeling, the same sensation he sometimes got with the first drink of the day.

  ‘Excuse me. I need to talk to you.’

  Caffery stopped, turned back. The man was on his feet. He was tall, with big hands, polished shoes and neat brown hair. Too brown. A bit of dye helping him out there.

  ‘Is there any news?’

  ‘Any news?’

  ‘On Lucy. You were in there just now, weren’t you?’

  ‘Who are you?’

  ‘Colin Mahoney. That’s my wife in there. My ex-wife, but she kept my name. They’re saying she killed herself.
Is that right? Is that what the doctor thinks?’

  ‘Your FLO will talk you through it. I think she’s on her way.’

  ‘My what?’

  ‘Weren’t you given an FLO? A family liaison officer to contact when Lucy was missing?’

  ‘Oh. Her.’ Colin wiped his forehead. ‘Sorry – but I didn’t put much faith in her. She hasn’t even called me today. And now I suppose Lucy’s in there and cut up already.’

  ‘When your liaison officer gets here she can talk to you. It’s not my place.’

  ‘Who are you then?’

  ‘DI Caffery.’ He flashed his warrant card. Didn’t say the words ‘major crime unit’.

  ‘OK – DI Caffery. You tell me. Did she kill herself?’

  ‘I can’t answer that question.’

  ‘Yes, you can.’

  Caffery sighed and put the card back into his pocket. ‘It’s not my case, but if it was, what I’d probably say to you at this point is the same thing my oppo in there will tell you when he comes out. The same thing your FLO will tell you.’

  ‘And what’s that?’

  ‘That we can’t say anything definitive until the inquest, but at this point we’re not looking for anyone else in connection with her death.’

  Mahoney sank into his chair, deflated. He put his elbows on his knees, dropped his head and stared at the carpet. ‘I can’t believe this. Just can’t believe this is happening.’

  Caffery watched him and thought about what it must have been like for his own mother. When he’d been just eight Caffery’s older brother Ewan had gone missing from their family home in South London. His body had never been found. It had happened one Saturday afternoon more than thirty years ago, and in those days the Metropolitan Police didn’t have family liaison officers. There’d have been no one to sit his mum down and say, ‘Look, if you want to talk about it, you can. Here’s my number – call any time you want. Would you like a cup of tea, love?’

  ‘The liaison officer should be here anytime.’

  ‘No, see, it can’t be right.’ Mahoney looked up. His face was a dull, congested red. ‘If she’s done that to herself, then what happened to Benjy?’

  ‘Benjy?’

  ‘The dog. I told the police specifically about Benjy. It was the first thing I said. Lucy took him with her. She must’ve had him in the car because they found dog biscuits on the back seat. He’s never come back.’

  ‘Mr Mahoney, I really suggest you take this up with your—’

  ‘That’s how I know it’s wrong. I mean, it was all wrong anyway because if she was planning on doing something to herself she wouldn’t have taken him with her. She’d have made sure he was looked after first. So where is he now?’

  Caffery thought about a dog. Abandoned. Lost. Living in the woods. Creeping along the backs of gardens. A wild eye swivelled to take in the human evidence: sheds, hover mowers, strimmers, rusting barbecues, children’s swings. He thought about all the creatures living on the fringes of towns and villages. Not his problem. ‘I’m sure he’ll come back, Mr Mahoney.’

  ‘He’d have done that already. He’d have found someone. He’s a smart cookie, that one. Smart and loyal.’

  ‘Mr Mahoney, like I say – this isn’t my job. My commiserations, sincerest commiserations, on what’s happened to Lucy. And I hope Benjy turns up safe and well. But . . .’ He put his hand on Mahoney’s shoulder and stood for a moment, looking him in the eye. In this job you had to be careful. You couldn’t pull your heart out for every person unfortunate enough to find themselves on the pathologist’s table. Even so, you could take one minute to think about them. To mark their life and your short involvement in it. So he stayed like that for a few short moments, then shook his head and turned away. ‘But you’ll have to take this up with your FLO.’

  You took the time to show a little respect. After that you had to move on. Fast.

  13

  It was eight o’clock in the evening and there was just one message on Flea’s phone. From Jack Caffery. She hadn’t answered the call. Didn’t much feel like talking. When the message icon popped up she dialled her mailbox and listened. Would she give him a call regarding what they’d talked about earlier? He’d like to take it further. He meant her breasts, of course. That was what he wanted to take further. She sat in the living room in her dad’s old recliner, a mug of tea at her elbow, her body tired, bones aching, and thought, How odd. How odd that she could have been in such a different world only a few short hours ago. Different hopes. Different fears.

  Thom hadn’t called. She’d tried to phone him eight times already and always got his mailbox. Mandy did late shifts and would have gone back to work a long time ago, back to the call centre she managed. Which meant what? That he was still avoiding the issue?

  Something would have to be done with Misty soon. In this heat it wouldn’t be long before it was impossible to handle her. Her body would liquefy. Flea’d seen it happen to a corpse after only a couple of days in hot weather. It would begin to run through the floor of the car. And the longer those fluids leaked the more tricksy it would be to remove the boot-liner fibres from Misty’s body and put her on the roadside. They couldn’t leave it any longer.

  She went upstairs, pulled out an ancient floor fan from one of the junk-filled bedrooms and dragged it down to the garage. She plugged it in, locked the door, double and Chubb, got her keys and her jacket. A little Renault Clio sat on the gravel driveway. She’d hired it when she’d left Thom’s. It was a shiny blue and smelt of upholstery cleaner and Turtle Wax. So different from the Focus. It was almost a pleasure to drive.

  The offices in Almondsbury were silent. The smell they’d played hide-and-seek with for the last two days had gone. Surprise, surprise. The place smelt like a dentist’s surgery. There was a note on her desk from Wellard saying the HSE had picked up the umbilicals and would be in touch when the tests were completed. That meant ages. It also meant they weren’t going to question her about the circumstances of the accident – how deep she’d been, for example. Any other day, that would have lifted her spirits.

  She worked fast and silently: from the storeroom she got foot covers, gloves and three yellow Tyvek biohazard suits. There were webbed straps in the dead-body recovery locker: she took three, two pieces of plastic sheeting and a handful of zip ties. She shoved it all into a mesh drysuit duffel bag and carried it to the car. With the radio on full blast she drove out on the ring road, stopping at various convenience shops and the Threshers in Longwell Green for bags of ice. At a Smile store in Hanham she found ten pink and green trays that would make ice cubes in the shapes of hearts, diamonds, clubs and spades. She bought all ten. Paid cash.

  Thom still wasn’t answering his phone.

  It was eleven when she got home. She checked for footprints in the gravel – her habit, accustomed as she was to the way the Oscars, her neighbours, would casually wander on to her property as if it was their own. The Marleys’ garden had once belonged to the Oscars’ house. They made no secret that they wanted to buy it back and reinstate their access to the valley. The garden was huge and stupid and rambling, far too large for her to care for, and somewhere down in its wilderness was a big problem: a folly built by one of the young men of the manor in the nineteenth century. Now it was collapsing. A surveyor in a yellow hard hat had come to inspect it and said it broke all the laws of physics and was dangerous. It needed to be either repaired or demolished. But she wasn’t going to give in. The garden had been Mum’s pride and joy. It wasn’t going to be sold off, no matter how troublesome it got.

  There weren’t any footprints. The house was exactly as she had left it. She parked the Clio on the gravel and went inside. Even in the hallway the smell coming from the garage hit her immediately. How in Christ’s name had she been able to walk back and forth past the Focus for the last couple of days, even drive the sodding thing, without noticing it?

  She slung the ice bags in the garage, carried everything else into the living room and stripped
down to her underwear. The Tyvek suit was two grades higher than the ones the crime-scene guys used and hot. She dragged it on, knotted her wild hair at the back of her head and pulled on the hood. Then, holding on to the sofa, she lifted her feet, and shoved them into bootees, cross-wise, the way she put on fins. The facemask she left dangling under her chin. From the kitchen she got a bottle of water and, slugging it as she went, traipsed clumsily down to the garage.

  ‘Right.’ She slammed the garage door behind her. ‘Let’s look after you.’

  The body needed to be cooled. The nights were still cold and there’d been a couple of chilly days, too, which meant she had to slow down the decomposition process to the level it would be at in the open. She couldn’t freeze the body then thaw it: the process left signs a good pathologist would pick up immediately. They would spot the telltale traces of ice crystals in the muscles, particularly the heart. Still, the process had to be reined in somehow.

  She plugged in the giant chest freezer in the corner. It hadn’t been used for years. Not since the day Dad had brought the family to the electricity meter and made them watch, in awe, the way the little red dials hummed when the freezer was plugged in, and how they slowed when it was off. A power hog, it was switched on only for parties and at the height of summer when Mum made ice cream. Flea filled the ice trays with water and rested them inside on the diamond-pressed aluminium bottom, piling them one on top of another. She closed the freezer, opened the ice bags with her teeth and emptied all the cubes into the old iron bath that stood in the corner among the mowers and diving equipment.

  When the boot was open again the smell was overwhelming. With just the mask and no respirator she had to turn away for a few moments and take long, deep breaths to stop the gag reflex overpowering her. Then, when her throat stopped spasming, she got to work, the suit rustling like dry leaves.

  She sealed the contents of Misty’s handbag in a green plastic bag, took out the Focus’s parcel shelf and levered down the back seats into the storage position. She put a sheet of plastic on the floor next to the back wheel and another below the bumper, its top end folded inside the boot and tucked under Misty’s left shoulder and left knee. She got into the back seat and leant over to work two webbing straps under Misty’s shoulders and hips. Then she crawled out and went back to the boot, finding the trailing ends of the straps, dropping them on the ground on top of the plastic sheeting and placing her feet firmly on them. Leaning over she caught the other ends of the straps and, taking a deep breath, began to pull.