Skin (23 page)

He unstuck the tape and carefully peeled them away. Then he put the photographs together and shovelled them into an envelope. He paused for a moment over the one of Misty’s coat. Purple – made of velvet. Something about the fabric pulled at his mind a moment. It was something about a car – something that made him think of a car and the coat. Car, coat. Car, coat. He tried to superimpose the two images one over the other, but each time they slipped and frittered away.

Nothing had come of the reconstruction yet. No suspect caught in the bushes with his dick in his hands, like the shrinks had said would happen. It made the whole team insane to think how little they had to go on with the case: just the witness statements from the rehab clinic of the last sightings and a statement from the boyfriend. All they knew for sure was that one of the other patients had smuggled in some goodies and they’d been partying. A little after two Kitson had left the building by the front entrance. She’d called the boyfriend as she left the clinic grounds. It had been a tearful conversation: she’d told him she was leaving for a walk because she needed time to think, that she couldn’t stand the place one more second. She’d said she’d be back at the clinic before five. The boyfriend had already been pissed off with her – he admitted it in the interview: it was his hard pennies earned in the midfield that were paying for the clinic. There was an argument. She hung up. He didn’t call back. It was only when the clinic telephoned hours later that he realized anything was wrong.

Caffery’s mobile rang. It was Powers. He put the photos into the top drawer and pulled the chair tight up to the desk. Time to talk.

‘Evening, boss. You still down in Sussex?’

‘Don’t.
Ceneren
bloody
tola
. Had to wait for the interval to get my phone out – she’s giving me the evils even as we speak.’

‘How’s the weather?’

‘Place is a mudbath. She keeps saying her Jimmy Choos are ruined. I mean, who is this character? You ever heard of him? Jimmy Choo?’

Jimmy Choo, fuck-me shoes. Not what Powers would want to hear about his wife of thirty years. ‘Saw you on telly this morning,’ Caffery said. ‘The Kitson press call. You looked very empathetic. Thought you might cry.’

‘Good, wasn’t it? Spent years working on it. Did you spot the lie?’

‘That the force is confident of finding her?’

‘No. When I said I was throwing all the manpower I had at it. When I said the whole team were committed one hundred per cent?’

‘Yeah. Well. We need to talk. It’s bad news.’

There was a pause. ‘Oka-ay. Do I need my Bolly livened up before we go on?’

‘Maybe.’

‘I don’t like this.’

‘I’ve been wondering how many murders we’re filing as suicides. Makes your head ache thinking about it.’

‘You’re talking about Ben Jakes, I suppose. He wasn’t a suicide?’

‘No. That’s the sweetness to this. Jakes was a suicide that looked like a murder. But I’ve got something else: a murder that looks like a suicide. Her name’s Mahoney. Lucy Mahoney. Found up near the Strawberry Line on Friday.’

‘What does the pathologist say?’

‘Well, she’s sticking to suicide. But she’s wrong. Look, boss, something’s way out of whack here. I’ve got this woman’s ex going on at me about how the dog’s missing – the dog was with her when she went misper – and what turns up yesterday in the quarry?’

‘Don’t tell me. Her dog.’

‘It was mutilated. The CSI lads said it looked like someone was trying to make a coat out of the damned thing. Then the ex says one of her door keys is missing.’

‘And how does she fit with what you’ve been doing on Norway?’

‘She doesn’t.’

‘Then, what the hell are you doing worrying about it?’

‘The time you gave me to tidy up the Norway problem? I want to spend it on this instead. I want to speak to the coroner.’

‘Oh, for fuck’s sake.’ Powers gave a deep sigh. Caffery could picture his face. He knew he’d be struggling not to climb down the phone line and chew him out for this. ‘Let me get this straight. You’re telling me you’ve dropped Norway and instead of coming back into the team on Kitson you’ve decided you’re off chasing another rabbit? I can’t believe I’m hearing this. I’m starting to think you’ve got something against the Kitson girl. It’s like you want to avoid the damned case. Like anything’s better than this. I can’t believe it.’

Caffery drummed his fingers on the table. ‘So? Is that a yes, then?’

‘Oh, brilliant. Very funny.’ He took some time, breathing carefully. Maybe he’d been to one of those alternative therapists to learn how to breathe his way through stress. ‘Look, if F District want to investigate this woman and her dog as something other than a suicide that’s their business. And if that happens, and if at the twenty-eight-day review they think it should come to us, then that’s the review team’s business. And I won’t argue with them. Because by then we’ll have found Misty Kitson and she’ll be safe and well and being photographed with her scum footie boyfriend and their horrible lapdogs in her kitchen in Chislehurst or Chingford or wherever it is these people come from. I’m sorry, Jack.’

‘Am I really that difficult?’

‘No. Just need you to pull with me. Pull with me.’

Misty’s case was so resource-heavy you could hear the cartwheels squealing. The force had thrown everything at it. Everything. Her phone records had come back in forty-eight hours. Lucy's had gone missing and no one had even noticed.

‘You know what?’ Caffery said. ‘You’re right. I’m going to get in early tomorrow and sit in with the HOLMES girls. Get up to speed with what’s going on. How about that?’

‘Yeah, well,’ Powers said gruffly.

‘I’ll help divvy up the day’s “Actions” for you, if you want. I can be there, let you have a lie-in.’

‘I’d settle for you telling me that when I get into the office in the morning my DI will be there. I don’t think that’s too much to ask.’

‘I will,’ Caffery said. ‘Have a good evening. Hope the rain stops for you.’

He hung up and stood for a minute, staring out at the butcher’s. It was starting to rain. He went to the desk and ran down the extension list, looking for Wells police station. He checked his watch. Six thirty. There was time. He was going to find out if the DI on the Lucy Mahoney case was still on duty, get all the witness statements from when she was a misper, take them home and read every one from cover to cover.

The Walking Man was right. This was his downfall. He just couldn’t let go.

34

All around the world scientists are growing skin. They’re using skin removed during cosmetic surgery, harvesting the cells and feeding them in a petri dish with agarose, glutamine, hydrocortisone and insulin. They add melanocytes to give pigment, dry off the top layer, and expose it to UV light to age it. Then they use it to test cosmetics, or sell it to order over the Internet to patch up burns and wounds.

The man has ordered some of this synthetic skin from its American manufacturers. It’s been shipped to him in injection-moulded polystyrene blocks: five flabby discs about the size of his palm, suspended in an agar nutrient medium and sealed in a high-grade polythene bag. As evening falls across the farmland that surrounds his lonely house he is examining the skin. He smells it, rests it on his hand and holds it up to the light. He screws his eyes shut and presses it to his face. Clenches his teeth and waits to feel better.

He’s been caught. Again.

Again
.

‘Sssssssh.’ He rocks slightly. Lets the skin settle into the shape of his jaw. The problem is taken care of. He’s sure it’s taken care of. Nothing to get upset about. ‘Sssssssh.’

He pulls the artificial skin away from his face. Stares at it angrily. It has no hair, no pigment and none of the Langerhans cells that allow real skin to fight infection. It has no blood and no sweat glands. It’s no better than rabbit or dog skin. In disgust he flicks it off his fingers into the bin, where it hits the side and clings. He watches it and then, when it shows no sign that it will drop, he gets up and uses a long tanning awl to push it into the bottom.

Nothing,
nothing
, is fair in this world.

35

The gastro pub was at the top of a steep city road in Clifton. It had red-brick floors, squashy sofas, a Swedish wood stove, and racks of vintage wines behind glass. Caffery and Colin Mahoney ordered J20s, ‘sharing bread’ and a sandwich each. They sat in one of the huge bay windows where they could see office workers hurrying to lunch.

‘How’s Daisy?’ Caffery asked. ‘How’s she coping?’

‘How do you think she’s coping? There just isn’t the vocabulary.’

‘Have you told her about the dog? ‘

‘Thought I’d save that one.’ Mahoney was dressed in his grey suit, a white shirt and an old-fashioned Paisley tie. He looked tired. ‘No one’s been in touch since you came over yesterday. Haven’t heard a thing. Nothing. Not even a card or a bunch of flowers from the FLO.’

‘Those liaison officers. They’re just scared of commitment.’

‘I was at least expecting someone to call to tell me it had been reclassified. You know, as a murder.’

‘Yeah, well.’ Caffery patted his pocket, felt the tobacco wallet and thought about having to go outside to smoke. He’d been into the office this morning and gone through the day’s HOLMES ‘actions’ for Powers. As he’d promised. He was entitled to do what he wanted with his lunch-hour. ‘I’m working on that. I really am. I’ve spoken to the pathologist.’

‘And?’

‘She’s having problems reversing the suicide decision. Standing pretty firm on it. The only wobbly place is the temazepam. If she’s got any knot at all, it’s that. When Lucy died she was full of benzodiazepines.’

‘Her GP used to tell her she’d get addicted, that she should have a nice G-and-T instead. But she knew how to work him. Bathroom cupboard used to rattle with them. It scared me, with Daisy around. So? Am I going to get an answer? Are you treating it as a murder?’

‘Not officially. But, for the sake of argument, say you and I work on the assumption we are?’

‘Not an assumption for me. It’s a fact.’

‘Then we move on to whodunit territory. Like suspects and motives.’

Mahoney held out his hands to show he was clueless.

‘We think someone used that missing key to come into her house. Maybe after it happened, right? To clean up. Or was there something else they wanted? You’ve checked nothing’s missing?’

‘Nothing, as far as I can tell. Only the Stanley knife and the key.’

‘Whoever’s got it could still come in and out.’

‘No, they couldn’t. I’ve changed the lock. I did it myself, this morning.’

For starters came Haloumi bread, warm and shiny with oil, lumps of cheese and caraway seeds pressing up through the crust like tiny black veins. The men ate, looking out at the suspension bridge. The sun glinted on the chocolaty river below.

‘I spent the night reading the witness statements from when she was a misper,’ Caffery said. ‘Talk to me a bit more about how it happened. She went missing at five thirty on the Sunday?’

‘That was the last time I saw her.’

‘And you called the police on the Monday?’

‘Yes.’

‘That was nearly twenty-four hours later. Why did you wait?’

‘I didn’t think it was appropriate. Until she didn’t turn up to get Daisy from school.’

‘Appropriate? But she was missing.’

‘I didn’t know she was. Not at that point. She just wasn’t answering my calls. If she chooses to stay out all night it’s not my business any more.’

‘How long have you been divorced?’

‘A year. Separated two.’

‘You were still close?’

‘Not at first. Daisy came with me to my mother’s, that was agreed right from the start, and at the beginning Lucy’d wait until I was at work to visit her. I didn’t see her for a year – we managed to avoid each other. Then things mellowed a bit, around the time the divorce was finalized. We settled some old arguments, started talking again, for Daisy’s sake. Lucy had changed in that time. You saw that, didn’t you, in the video?’

‘Why did you separate in the first place? What were the circumstances?’

‘I left. We’d run out of things to enjoy together. We were growing apart.’

‘Growing apart – that sounds like the sort of excuse people come up with for something else.’

Mahoney smiled nervously. ‘I don’t know, but the way you’re speaking to me here, it sounds as if I’m on trial.’

‘No. I’m just trying to get a picture. Something you tell me might have the key to all this. Even if you don’t realize it. Did Lucy have a boyfriend? She was an attractive woman.’

Mahoney folded a napkin on to his lap. The rest of the meal was already on its way, but he picked up the menu and studied it anyway.

‘Colin? I asked if Lucy had a boyfriend.’

He coughed. ‘I’m wondering if I should have chosen the roast-pork sandwich instead. Wednesdays, in the summer, they do a hog roast here on the street for people coming out of the office. Whole pig on a spit. Hand it out in napkins. Nice with Somerset apple sauce.’