Mo Hayder - Skin

‘Phoebe!’ She was one of the only people in the world apart from Mandy who used Flea’s real name. ‘You always fascinate me.’

Flea slammed the door behind her and stepped out on to the gravel. ‘Fascinate you? Why? What have I done now?’

Katherine laughed. She touched the sides of her hair, patting them into place. ‘Oh, just – you know. The sort of cars you always have. Like this one. Is it new?’

‘It is.’

‘What is it?’ She bobbed down to inspect the badge. ‘Ah! A Renault. A sweet little Renault. I suppose it’s a kind of city car?’

‘A kind of city car?’

‘Yes. A runaround. You know.’

‘It’s not a Land Rover. Is that what you mean?’

‘No. No, it’s not. Is it?’ She smiled, folded her arms and made a show of looking around herself. The garage light was off but the light was on in the hallway, making the brown paper in the windows glow softly. ‘I see you’ve blocked off the windows in the garage. What are you doing in there, so Secret Squirrelly?’ She gave a laugh. ‘Not cutting up dead bodies, I hope. With your job, my imagination runs riot.’

‘You caught me. I admit it. I’m cutting up dead bodies. You know, the people who irritate me. I’ve got a list. Want to see it?’

‘You Marleys, you crack me up.’

‘We aim to please.’

She moved past Katherine, pointing the keys at the Clio. It unlocked and blinked its lights at her. Her hand was on the door before Katherine hurried round to the front of the car. ‘I’m sorry, Phoebe, we’ve got off on the wrong foot again. You know, it’s only that I’m hoping you’ll rethink – about the garden? The press are quite clear about it. Look – it’s here in the paper. The credit crunch has taken hold, property prices are sliding. We’ve made you a good offer. We’d honour it, of course.’

The garden was Flea’s headache. It would be the easiest thing in the world to sell it – maybe even half of it, the half with the folly – and let Katherine take on the responsibility. But then Flea thought about Mum, how she used to spend all her time out there. She threw the torch on the Clio’s passenger seat and got into the car. ‘I don’t think so.’

Katherine hesitated for a moment, then hurried round to the window, her face flushed. ‘My God, you’re as bad as your bloody parents.’

Flea slammed the door. She opened the window and looked down at Katherine’s feet. ‘I think this conversation’s over. Do you want me to drive you back to your place, or will you walk?’

Katherine was still for a moment, then pushed herself back from the car. ‘No, thank you. I’d much prefer to walk.’

‘Good,’ Flea said. ‘Then you won’t mind if I drive behind you, will you?’

The prostitutes had started when Caffery had arrived in Bristol. Back in London there had been girlfriends, women he’d imagined he loved. Women who’d loved him. One or two he’d even lived with, letting them come to share the little terraced house he’d bought from his parents. The house Ewan had gone missing from. But he’d got to a point, with forty staring him in the face, when he’d come to understand that the only real talent he had with women was knowing how to damage them. So he went to girls he would never see again. Girls like Keelie.

The streets around City Road were busy. It wasn’t even dark yet and already the girls were out. He saw Keelie straight away – she was easy to spot. She’d made it that way by always wearing the same thing: a white Puffa with silver stripes on the side. It was a street technique so her regular punters would recognize her at a distance. It reassured them. They’d get unsettled, she said, if she changed her clothes and her hair, and would start wondering who she was hiding from and if she’d been ripping punters off. He wasn’t going to approach her in the open – didn’t know if the Tokoloshe was sitting out there somewhere in the darkness, watching – and decided to wait in the doorway of a Claire’s Accessories shop, loitering with all the girls’ gewgaws and pink sparkly things until she noticed him.

They went to a room above a pub. Under the jacket she wore a Spandex mini and a silver T-shirt. She was a tall girl with dense, freckled calves that didn’t jiggle as she walked up the stairs in front of him. She’d look like a hockey teacher if it wasn’t for her hair, highlighted the colour of cold beer, or the way her heels spread out and hung over the edges of the slingbacks.

She had a new phone. She was proud of the way she took care of herself: never going ‘bareback’, never faking it – Most of the girls do. They’ve got thigh muscles like crowbars. Grease them up and hold on tight. If he’s drunk enough he won’t know the difference . Not Keelie. She was a professional. Always used a condom. Always made a safety call on her mobile: repeating the name of the punter, his appearance, the car registration and where she was going to be. She’d done it the night they’d been together in Caffery’s car in the alley, but watching her now he doubted she was actually speaking to anyone, standing with her back to him, hip leaning against the sink, one finger holding up the dingy curtain to look out into the street at her colleagues. She probably wouldn’t want to spare the price of a phone call. It made him a little sad to think of this token effort to be tough, sensible. Like it would save her somehow.

‘Why’d you change your phone number?’

She put the phone in her bag and came over to the chair. ‘Why d’you think? I only gave it to repeat clients.’ She leant on the word ‘clients’ as if it would make her sound as if her business was law, or corporate espionage, or interior design. ‘But sometimes they take the piss. Start thinking I run a jerk-off phone line or that it’s cool to call me at six in the morning while their wife’s in the shower or something.’ She lifted one foot on to her knee and unbuckled the slingback. ‘That, or the wife gets hold of the number and starts having an epi at me down the line. Do you want these on? The heels?’

‘No.’

She pulled off the scuffed shoes and kicked them under the chair, then opened her bag and took out a cigarette. Lit it. ‘Look at the smoke alarm.’ She nodded at the ceiling. The padding of a bra had been gaffer-taped to the sensor. ‘That’s what most of the girls round here think of no-smoking rooms.’ She got up, stepped out of her knickers and kicked them under the chair. They had an Ann Summers label sewn inside. Ann Summers. Respectable sex. High-street stuff now. Not like when he was starting out in London – when you had to go all the way to Berwick Street to be sure of finding a sex shop. ‘You’re my last tonight. I’ve done well.’

‘You can keep them on.’

‘The heels?’

‘The knickers.’

‘Eh?’

‘Just talk.’

She eyed him. ‘You’ve paid me now. Once you’ve paid me it’s a done deal. You change your mind and you’re the one’s got to suck it up.’

‘Keep the money.’

She took a couple of drags on the cigarette, looked him up and down. ‘I can’t be here more than fifteen minutes – that’s it. Talk isn’t cheaper than sex. OK?’

‘It’s about a punter.’

‘Oh, no, you’re not doing that. I know you’re a cop, Jack.’

‘Since when?’

‘Always have.’

‘How?’

‘The way you walk. Like you think you’re going to get jumped any second.’

‘Is that why you never look me in the eye?’

‘No. I don’t look you in the eye because you don’t want anyone looking you in the eye. I knew that the first time I saw you. Here’s someone who doesn’t want to be reminded of what he’s doing, I thought. Has to be a cop.’