Chris Simms: Shifting Skin

Jon felt a wave of revulsion at the pathologist’s reply. He’d sat in on a lot of post mortems over the years. But he never could get used to the macabre comments that bounced between the mortuary staff with the same ease as the pre-match banter in his rugby club’s changing room.

‘So he may not have medical training?’ he asked, suddenly aware of the muscles moving beneath his flesh.

The pathologist stood up and removed his gloves. ‘He’s got some skill, but it could have been gained from practising on dead pigs, for all I know.’

*

‘Jon! Have you seen the local paper from last week?’ Alice’s voice, calling up from the bottom of the stairs.

He blinked once or twice, waiting for the images to fade. Then he looked at the sheets of newspaper covering the table in front of him. ‘Yeah, it’s up here.’

‘You’re not using it to cover that table are you?’

‘Well, it’s last week’s, babe. This week’s is by the sofa, I think.’

She began puffing up the stairs, slow footsteps eventually reaching the top. ‘There was something in the classified section I wanted,’ she announced, slightly out of breath.

Jon turned to the doorway. His girlfriend stood there, strands of blond hair haphazard on her shoulders, football-shaped stomach forcing its way between her T-shirt and tracksuit bottoms.

Jon’s eyes moved from the strange blue line that had appeared beneath the tightly stretched skin. ‘What was it?’

‘One of those abdominal crunchers.’

‘I thought you were buying Chloe’s off her?’

‘Someone else beat me to it. She forgot to mention she’d also put an ad up on the noticeboard at her hospital.’

‘That was good of her.’ Jon lifted the tray off the table and put it on the floor. He peeled the paint-covered spoon off a sheet of newspaper, leaving a thick daub of red behind. ‘Are you sure this shade isn’t too bright?’ Carol Miller’s blood was still in his mind.

‘Jon, it’s going to be a nursery. We want it bright and cheerful.’

‘Yeah, but red? Isn’t it meant to close a room in? That’s why they paint the ceilings of boozers with it.’

‘Ah,’ she countered, ‘but we’re only using it for the skirting boards and doorframe. The rest of the room will be in that bumblebee yellow.’

Jon started shuffling through the pages, scanning the columns of advertisements.

‘There you go.’ She stepped over and slid a page towards her.

‘Health and Beauty section.’ She traced a finger down the ‘A’ column. ‘I thought so: ab cruncher, ten pounds. Bargain.’ She tore the corner of the page off.

Jon looked at her enormous bump. ‘Are you sure that’s a good idea at this time?’

Alice giggled. ‘It’s for afterwards, stupid. God, if I can hardly do my own shoelaces up, how will I use one of these? But once the little one’s arrived, I can start working my abdominals and pelvic floor, get my stomach back in shape.’

Jon stepped behind her and spread his fingers across her swollen belly. ‘I quite like you with a bit of a pot.’

She laid her hands over his, leaned back against his chest and turned her head to look up at him. ‘Will you still like it when it’s just a saggy fold of flesh?’

Jon made an effort to smile. ‘Of course. It will be a part of you.’

She squeezed his hands. ‘And what about the pelvic floor stuff? Pissing in my knickers every time I run up the stairs?’

She had plunged him into something he had no knowledge of and he tried to drop his hands away. She clutched them tight, laughter rippling through her. ‘It’s all part of the process. You’d better get used to this sort of stuff. Just be thankful it won’t be you in a few week’s time, legs up in stirrups, squeezing out a great big bundle of joy.’

Jon grinned. ‘You know I’d share the pain with you if I could.’

‘Yeah, right.’ She released his hands and headed out of the room, trailing the scrap of newspaper behind her.

Jon put the paint tray back on the table, eyes drawn once again to the clot of congealing paint. A conversation with Carol Miller’s mum began playing in his head. He’d asked what her daughter’s state of mind had been like. How happy she was. The old lady had replied that her daughter had been unhappy with her weight ever since giving birth to Davey. She’d tried all sorts of diets but never succeeded in removing the two stone her pregnancy had left her with. At the time Jon had begun to screen out the answer, letting the mother ramble to a conclusion, his next question already lined up. But now he scrutinised her words more carefully.

The old lady had said Carol had tried Weight Watchers and a soup diet, but recently she’d returned from work having spotted something that had given her fresh hope.

‘Ali?’ he called. ‘Your mate Chloe’s ab cruncher. You said she’d sold it on the noticeboard at her hospital.’

‘Yeah.’ Her voice floated up from the front room.

Jon stared down at the classified section of the newspaper. Buffered up against the last column of the ‘Health and Beauty’ entries was the start of the ‘Personal Services’ section: ad after ad of massage parlours, adult saunas and escort services. He looked back at ‘Health and Beauty’, seeing the unwanted mountain bikes, exercise bikes, mini-steppers, rowing machines, power sliders and flexi steps. He smiled cynically at the two sections’ proximity: if attempts at making yourself look good failed, you only had to travel across the page and buy yourself a shag.

In the front room he crouched down to stroke his boxer dog’s ears. ‘This noticeboard, is it in the hospital reception or something?’

Alice put the torn-off corner of newspaper on the table. ‘No, it’s in the staff room of A and E, I think. I know all sorts of stuff gets pinned up there. It’s how she found her flat. One of the consultants was advertising.’

‘Do you reckon every hospital department has one?’

‘I’d have thought most would. Why, what’s on your mind?’ He made his voice sound casual, ‘Nothing much. It just started off a train of thought.’

‘About this case you’re on?’ Her voice had dropped a notch. The previous year, Jon’s hunt for the Chewing Gum Killer had placed his family in extreme danger. The nature of his work was an area they both still skirted round nervously.

Jon nodded and stood up. ‘I just need to pop out. I won’t be long.’

Alice’s eyes slid to the clock on the video. ‘Half past eight at night? Can’t it wait until tomorrow?’

But the thought was an itch he couldn’t ignore. ‘I’ll be back in no time.’

She let out a long sigh and Punch glanced up, sensing her frustration as it billowed across the room. ‘Well, at least wash the paint off your hands.’

He stood at the kitchen sink, one hand under the stream of water, watching the curls of red snaking down the plug hole. So far his delving into Carol Miller’s life had revealed very little. She hadn’t been seeing anyone since her husband had disappeared two months after the baby was born. The grandmother had found herself looking after Davey a lot more than she had planned — Carol’s income had plummeted and she’d been forced back into midwifery as a locum, filling in last-minute staff shortages at Stepping Hill hospital’s maternity ward. Usually that meant weekends and evenings.

Although she still had the terraced house in Bredbury, the rent was getting harder and harder to meet. The grandmother had been expecting Carol to ask about moving back in very soon. Until, that is, she turned up in a Belle Vue park with large portions of her skin cut off.

He dried his hands on the tea towel, pulled a jacket on over his old rugby shirt, then tucked his warrant card into the breast pocket. On his way to the front door he paused at the door into the front room. Punch’s big brown eyes watched him dolefully. Alice kept staring at the magazine on her lap.