Chris Simms - Shifting Skin

Jon pointed to the closed door. Then he stepped into the house and walked into the TV room on the right.

Gray whirled round. ‘Hey! The kitchen’s down here.’

Jon was in the centre of the room, looking at the bookshelves.

‘Sorry?’

Gray walked angrily into the room. ‘You heard me. The kitchen, it’s down-’

He heard the door across the corridor being opened and realised he was caught in between the two men.

Jon read out some of book titles. ‘ The Anatomical Drawings of Leonardo da Vinci. Andreas Vesalius: The Work of a Master. Clinical Anatomy for Medical Students , Richard S. Snell. Gray’s Anatomy . What a strange collection. What would you want with books like these?’ He took Gray’s Anatomy off the shelf.

‘What? Put that down.’ He looked towards the other room.

‘Get out of that fucking room. This is illegal!’

‘I’m sorry, sir, but you invited us in.’

‘Jon, in here.’ Rick’s voice was thick with suppressed emotion.

Jon kept his eyes on Pete Gray. The man was highly agitated, but there was still red in his cheeks. Jon knew if he was about to fight or run his face would be white, the blood rushing into his arms and legs. ‘After you, sir.’ Jon extended a hand towards the corridor.

They went into the other room. Rick had a folder open on the dining-room table and was spreading out colour photos.

What struck Jon at first was the redness of the bodies; torsos completely stripped of their flesh, skull-like faces with eyeballs exposed, lips missing and teeth bared to the world.

Dawn Poole paused before the bedroom door, took a slight breath in and pushed it open.

The patient was sitting up in bed staring across the room. Rows of stitches along the jaw were merging with a light covering of stubble. The nose was still swollen from where Dr O’Connor had broken it, shaved down the bone, then reset it. Bruising lay heavy beneath the eyes. ‘Did you get them?’

Dawn shook her head. ‘I couldn’t. That policeman was there, the one who came asking questions at the Platinum Inn.’ She realised that she was still in the doorway, nervousness rooting her to the spot. ‘He saw me and I had to walk off. What’s going on? Why was he there?’

But her questions hadn’t been heard. The top of the sheet was being twisted in a knot, red fingernails digging deep into the folds of material. ‘I need fucking Androtone. Look at me! The hair’s coming back. I’m disgusting.’

Meekly, Dawn stepped forwards. ‘You’ve been in bandages for days. When I had my leg in plaster for a while it was covered in hair when the cast came off.’

‘Your leg, not your face! Jesus!’ The patient looked wildly around, scratching at the spiky hair on his head. ‘My bust’s shrinking, too. He can’t deny me my tablets. I must have Progesterone!’

‘They’re not shrinking darling,’ said Dawn, looking at the swelling under his nightgown.

‘You’re lying! In there.’ A hand flapped towards the chest of drawers. ‘Second drawer down.’

‘Alex, you’re scaring me.’

His eyes met hers. ‘Listen, it’s not my fault. It’s the testosterone. It’s flooding me like poison.’ Wretchedly, he clutched a hand between his legs. ‘Oh God, the sooner we go to Holland and I get the full operation…Now, please, the drawer?’

Dawn took a few more tentative steps into the room, increasingly alarmed at the aggressive way he was ordering her around. It had never happened before. At the start of their relationship she’d found things awkward, not knowing if they were stumbling towards something that would involve sex. Then, one night, he had gently resisted her hesitant advance, telling her that, although he loved her, it was as a soulmate. More than friends, but not quite lovers.

She was just glad to know one way or another, and actually quite relieved they could continue together as companions without the confusion. As the trust between them grew, he’d begun to describe his dream of being more than a transvestite, of becoming an actual woman.

She’d been shocked and worried. Was the operation dangerous? Would he want to leave her once the transformation was complete? But she soon realised that, in many ways, he needed her more. As a physical carer after each painful stage of surgery and as an emotional carer as he struggled with feelings of selfdoubt and despair.

Cost was the hardest part. He’d never had more than the most basic jobs, same for her. She’d reacted with horror to his suggestion that he go on the game. But he told her that he’d done it before. He’d worked as a rent boy for spells during his teens and early twenties. He knew there was a thriving market for transvestites and pre-op transsexuals. Knowing his happiness depended on changing sex, she eventually accepted the idea.

The first night he went out in full drag she’d been terrified for his safety. But he reappeared the next morning with hundreds of pounds. Within a few more nights he’d earned enough money to pay Dr O’Connor for his cheek implants. So the process began. Alex selling himself to pay for the next stage of surgery, lying in bed being cared for by her as his wounds healed, then going back on the game to finance his next visit to O’Connor.

Of course, there were times when he was angry, hurt by punters’ scathing remarks or cheated out of payment after servicing their needs. Her mind jumped to the night Fiona had thought she heard someone being killed. ‘Alex, the night before Dr O’Connor operated on your nose and jaw, you were working, remember? You brought a punter back to the motel in the early hours. Did you end up in room nine?’

‘Second drawer down!’ A sudden falsetto scream.

She flinched, then hurried across to the chest of drawers. On top of it was a mannequin’s head, covered by a chestnut-brown wig shot through with strands of red. Dawn opened the drawer and gaped at the pile of cash inside. ‘Where did all this come from?’

‘Take two hundred. Get over to Annabella’s. Tell her I need a fortnight’s worth of Androtone, two hundred and fifty mg a day. And Progesterone, five-mg pills, all she’s got. Now go!’

Dawn peeled off four fifty-pound notes and almost ran from the room.

The patient sat back, arms over the covers, palms upwards. After a few seconds the robin flew in. It perched on the end of the bed, peered at him, then flew halfway up and landed by his hand. He watched it impassively until it alighted on his palm. Then his fingers clamped inwards, crushing it to death.

‘You’ve done what!’ McCloughlin exploded.

Jon kept his voice calm. ‘Sir, he tried to run. We had no choice.’

McCloughlin looked at Rick for confirmation.

‘It’s true, sir. He saw me with this lot and went for the door.’

‘At which point DI Spicer body-checked him so hard, he’s claiming that his shoulder’s dislocated.’ McCloughlin voice was brimming with contempt.

‘It’s not dislocated, sir. Believe me, he’d have been squealing a lot louder if it was,’ Jon answered.

‘Shit,’ said McCloughlin. He looked down at the clear plastic bag and the collection of images inside. ‘So what the bloody hell are these?’

Rick stepped forward. ‘It’s the work of a German anatomist called Gunther von Hagen, sir. He’s pioneered a process called plastination. Basically, he takes the corpses of people who’ve left their bodies for medical research, strips them of their flesh, dissects them to expose the internal organs, preserves the whole thing and puts them on display.’

McCloughlin was shaking his head. ‘Yes, I remember there was a documentary on TV. I switched over after a few minutes.’ He stared at a photo of a corpse, its own skin draped over its outstretched arm. Another of a man holding a basketball in one claw, tensed and ready to leap, all his muscles exposed, mouth open in an eternal gasp for breath. ‘Where are these monstrosities put on show?’