Chris Simms - Shifting Skin

Jon Spicer looked around what used to be his weight training room and sighed. Bare plaster walls faced him, exposed surfaces still raw from where he’d scrubbed them with sandpaper. The carpet was hidden by dust sheets that stretched from skirting board to skirting board. In the corner the steam machine looked like the victim of a clumsy shave, scraps of dry wallpaper stuck all over it.

He started peeling apart last week’s local paper, separating the pages and laying them across the small table in the middle of the room. Immediately, and even as he tried to look away, his eyes were snagged by the front-page headline: butcher of belle vue strikes again.

Quickly he flipped the page over, but it was too late. The horrific details of his latest case came streaming into the last place on earth he wanted them: the nursery.

The latest victim, Carol Miller, had been a midwife at Stepping Hill hospital. She was good-looking, her strong facial features complemented by a curvy, full figure. The sort of woman his dad would refer to in his strong Lancashire accent as ‘proper breeding material’. In his own way, he would have been right. She’d given birth to a thickset baby the year before. Jon had watched as the infant drained an entire bottle of milk without pausing for breath, blissfully unaware of the tears streaming down the face of his grandmother above him. Jon had sat with his tongue frozen in his mouth, thanking God the bereavement counsellor had come with him to inform the woman that her only child was dead. The counsellor had kept up a soothing murmur, the actual words of secondary importance to the comforting tone of her voice.

‘What will become of our Davey?’ the woman had gasped.

‘His father’s not around and I’m not well. What will become of him when I’m gone?’

The wrinkles round her eyes deepened and she started sobbing again. Jon could feel her looking at him and he kept his eyes fixed on the counsellor, willing her to break the silence with an answer. Say something, he pleaded in his head, because if you don’t I’m going to fucking cry.

Pushing the memory away, he picked up the paint tray and decorating implements. He banged them down on the table, then placed the tin of paint next to the tray. Getting his blunt nails under the lid, he began to pull, increasing the force until the pain in his fingers got too much. ‘Bastard,’ he cursed, glaring at the tin like it was trying to insult him. He glanced around for a suitable tool, and spotted the scraper lying next to the steam machine. Only able to fit the corner of its blade under the lid’s rim, he cautiously increased the downward pressure. The seal broke with a pop and the blade jerked upwards, gouging into his thumb. Pain shot through his hand and he drew the scraper back, ready to slash the side of the tin in retaliation.

Get a grip, he told himself, placing it on the table and examining his thumb. The red line ran across his knuckle, merging with an old scar from where an opposition player had stamped on his hand while wearing illegal rugby studs. Jon sucked the back of his thumb, then blew a thin stream of air on to the wet skin, the coolness detracting from the pain. He peered into the open tin, frowning at the purplish red paint inside. Then he picked up the plastic spoon and scooped a dollop of viscous liquid into the tray.

Immediately an image of the pathologist dropping Carol Miller’s liver into a stainless steel tray appeared in his head. As the pathologist had stepped across to the mortuary’s scales, Jon couldn’t help staring at the corpse on the autopsy table before him.

She had been found early in the morning, naked except for her knickers, stretched out in the middle of a small park in Belle Vue. The skin from her upper thighs, stomach, chest and neck lay in a neat pile beside her, muscles, tendons, ligaments and subcutaneous fat exposed to the world. The Home Office pathologist who attended the crime scene quickly concluded that she had been moved there from another location. Lifting one of Carol’s arms, he pointed to the long grass beneath it. ‘No blood. If she’d been flayed here, this whole area would be soaked.’

Jon had stepped out of the white tent shrouding the body and looked around. He was standing in the centre circle of a badly neglected football pitch. It had rained during the night, washing valuable forensic evidence off the body and blurring the many footprints in the patches of mud around it. The area was overlooked by residential properties. Dotted in the unkempt turf was lump after lump of dogshit — apart from late at night, the animals’ owners must be using the area as a toilet for their pets almost continually. Even now a woman with a brindle Staffy was hovering beyond the perimeter tape, surreptitiously watch- ing. The ghoul. Jon walked round the white tent, putting it between him and the woman’s inquisitive glances. He looked at the modern, cheap council stock, ground-floor windows elongated and narrow to deter burglars. They had a defensive appearance, like machine-gun slits in pillboxes.

Beyond them a large church spire thrust upwards, the flat grey sky making the green copper stand out. Jon shook his head: there was little evidence of the forces of good in this grim place. He dropped his eyes back to earth, looking at the scattering of seagulls waiting at the far end of the pitch. Their hunched postures made them appear resentful of his presence on their feeding ground.

Behind him came the low rumble of traffic, a steady stream of it passing along the A57. He moved away from it, stepping between the team preparing to go over the immediate area on their hands and knees, and walked over to the park’s perimeter fence. Rubbish was piled against its base, deposited there by the unrelenting wind that blew across the bleak expanse of grass. At the top of the park was a basketball court, the cracked concrete furred with patches of moss. Fragments of glass crunched under his foot as he paced across it. On his left he counted another gate into the park. That was the fifth. By the time he’d circled the perimeter he’d counted seven more. Twelve possible entry points for the killer. The whole place would need sealing off. He halted under a wiry tree, noticed the beginnings of leaf buds on the bare twigs above him. He took a little comfort in the thought that spring would soon be here to transform the desolate place.

Why take the risk of leaving the body here, in a park overlooked by so many houses? Perhaps the victim was being made an example of. Some sort of warning?

Jon had to agree with the pathologist. There was no way this was where the killer had carried out his…what? Surgical procedure? He walked back to the tent and stepped inside. ‘There was a bit of disagreement about the first victim — whether her killer had any surgical knowledge. Assuming the same person is responsible for this one, what’s your opinion?’

The pathologist was about to take a glove off. He stopped, allowing the rubber to snap back over his wrist. ‘As I understand it, the first victim only had the skin from her chest and upper arms removed?’

Jon nodded.

‘And here we see he’s removed the skin from her throat, chest, stomach and upper thighs. In both cases it’s not a particularly difficult procedure to perform. Anyone with the most basic knowledge of surgery, probably even a butcher, could manage it.’

‘Really?’ Jon was surprised.

The pathologist smiled. ‘Ever peeled the skin off a raw chicken breast? Not much more to it than that. You just use the tip of a very fine scalpel to help divide it from the layer beneath — something to think about next time you’re making a casserole.’