Mo Hayder - Skin

‘About Clement,’ he said. ‘Do you know if he was cruel to animals?’

‘Everyone in that place was cruel to everything. That’s my understanding of the situation.’

‘Ever talk about taking a knife to a dog or anything?’

‘Not a dog. They hated dogs in Tanzania, apparently. Thought they were vermin – wouldn’t touch them.’

‘But the gang he worked for dealt with endangered species back in Tanzania.’

‘Not dogs. Dogs aren’t endangered.’

What had Beatrice said? Little ASBO kids from the Southmead estate would be capable of something like that . Was she right? Was the dog really not connected here?

‘Why’d they go for you, Ian? You’re white.’

‘I dunno. Clement liked white people.’

‘He thought we had more power, didn’t he? Thought our bodies made better muti ?’

‘Maybe.’

Caffery shifted in his chair and pretended to be fastening his cuffs. ‘The reason I’m asking about who was in the squat, Ian, is that some of my witnesses from this case said they’d seen something they couldn’t understand.’

Mallows’s Adam’s apple moved, but he didn’t speak.

‘Their imaginations were working overtime, of course, but they talked about seeing a monster. Now your friend Chipeta says it was him. Dressed up.’

‘Oh, he does, does he?’

‘Yes. Is he telling the truth?’

‘Ask him.’

‘I’m asking you. Once again. Was there something in that place you couldn’t explain?’

No answer.

‘Was it there when we came in? Did it escape?’

Silence.

‘Did it see me? Was it watching me?’

Silence again.

‘Ian, you said you’d speak to me. That was the deal.’

Mallows gave him a fierce look. ‘And I’ve given you all the answers I’ve got. You want to know anything else you go down City Road. You know City Road, I take it?’

‘Yes.’

‘Thought you might. Try speaking to the whores down there. There’s one – blonde girl, white jacket. Have a word with her. Ask her opinion on the subject of monsters.’

Caffery stopped buttoning his shirt and stared at Mallows. He thought of his car parked in an alleyway off City Road the night something had slammed on to his bonnet. He’d been with a prostitute that night – not something he had printed on a T-shirt, but it was true. Her name was Keelie. She’d been in the car with him. ‘Did you get a name? Of the girl? The hooker?’

‘Nah. Just one of the millions. You know how it goes.’

Caffery fumbled in his pocket and pulled out a scrap of paper he’d been carrying for days. It was the disconnected number dialled from Ben Jakes’s phone. He’d called it once, on his work phone, not the phone where he stored his personal contacts, but he’d never tried it on his personal line. Now he thumbed the number in. The mobile paused, the screen went blank, then a small flashing icon came up with the words ‘calling Keelie City Road mobile’. Someone – the Tokoloshe? – had used Jakes’s phone to call Keelie. The prostitute. The ghost of an idea moved through him.

He stood, pulled on his jacket and fastened the buttons. ‘Thank you, Ian. I wish you luck until the next dose.’

‘Hey.’ Mallows sat up hurriedly in bed. ‘Where do you think you’re going? You made a promise. You said you’d tell me where my hands are. I need to know they’re somewhere that bastard uncle can’t get at them. Don’t want him touching them again.’

‘They’re safe.’ Caffery paused, his hand on the door. ‘The pathologist examined them, gave them their own little postmortem, and now they’re under lock and key. Waiting for the coroner to tell him what to do with them.’

‘Where?’ Mallows sat up, his eyes bulging. The soft light falling on the bed made him look as if he was in some hellish religious painting. Bosch or Goya. ‘You said you’d tell me where they are.’

Caffery opened the door and stood in the doorway for a moment. ‘They’re here. In the hospital mortuary in the basement. In fact, you know what?’ He shook his head at the irony. ‘They’ve been here all along. All this time. Just thirty feet under you.’

Flea sat in her father’s chair, legs pushed out, a glass of Tanqueray and tonic in her hand, and stared at Farleigh Park Hall on the TV. A neo-classical mansion with wraparound porticoes and a sandstone loggia, it had been spruced up by the clinic owners for the programme: the windows had been newly cleaned, the twin fountains at the front were playing and a pair of peacocks wandered near by, pecking idly at the grass. A girl appeared on the screen and walked down the front steps. Her yellow hair was dull – as if it could absorb sunlight. The sandals, Flea thought. They’ve got those wrong. They were silver, not gold. Silver. But everything else… everything else is right on the nail. The neon green dress, the purple velvet coat. In her hand she carried a sequined bag that glinted as she moved. There’d probably be a heart-stamped Nokia in that bag too. Every detail was important.

This morning at eleven, while she’d been in quarry two, MCIU had staged a reconstruction of Misty’s last hours at the clinic. When the cameras went to a wide shot of the clinic you could see how many people had turned up for it. Vehicles overflowed the improvised car parks in the fields, live-feed vans bristled with uplink satellite dishes, reporters stood in front of cameras twitching at their hair and ties, crews milled around adjusting tripods, microphones. Groups of cops were standing around, talking in low voices. Up near the fountains a grey-haired man in a dark blue raincoat looked suspiciously like the chief constable.

Pessimism settled down neatly on Flea’s shoulders. It would take a miracle for the force to drop this case.

She killed the TV and carried her drink into the kitchen. She couldn’t sit there waiting for Thom to call any longer. She had to do something now, had to start looking for the place of the accident. The newest water-cooler intelligence said the forensic lab in Chepstow was testing hairs and fibres lifted from several breached places on the clinic perimeter, just to give them a lead on which way Misty might have left the grounds. She didn’t have access to the techniques and budgets the force had. All she had was her brain. She’d have to think harder, faster and neater than the whole force put together.

In the kitchen she took the few things off the table – a pepper grinder and the earthenware mug Mum had always kept cutlery and napkins in – then spread out the paperwork she’d brought home from the office: the photos of Misty’s clothes and the Blue 8 map print-offs the unit had used on the Farleigh Park lake search three days ago. She sat in the place she’d sat at all her life, on the left, between where Thom and Dad would have sat opposite Mum, and tried to think.

The police knew which direction Misty had left the clinic. They had a fix on her from her mobile phone. Pearce had been talking to Caffery about it at the Strawberry Line suicide. Phone masts usually had sectored antennae heads that beamed out segments making up 380 degrees. The signal from a particular mobile phone could be placed within one of those sections: some masts had as many as six heads, which narrowed these so-called ‘cells’ to about 60 degrees, so it was possible to tell at what angle a phone was from a mast, but not how far away. Unless another mast came into the equation. And then, especially if the phone was close to one of the masts, the search segment could be reduced at times almost to a pinpoint.

Misty’s phone had been a Nokia flip-open. Flea had studied the mock-up photograph. Its casing had been stainless-steel and it had an LCD screen – a little like her own phone except that Misty had customized hers with stick-on jewels in the shape of a heart. It wasn’t in the sequined handbag, it wasn’t in the coat pockets and Thom hadn’t trousered it, she was sure of that. So where was it?