Mo Hayder - Skin

Ruth Lindermilk glanced up and down the lane to see if they were being watched. ‘Are you on your own? No one else with you?’

‘No one else. Just me. Can I come in?’

She hesitated. She gave Flea another once-over, taking in the T-shirt, the combats. Then, with a grunt, she let the door swing open. Flea stepped inside. Mrs Lindermilk slammed the door and headed away down the narrow little corridor. It was dark here. Flea followed the ghostly white blob of the woman’s cap, keeping her neck slightly bent because she sensed the ceilings might get suddenly low, like at home. There was a smell in the house, a mixture of dinners cooked long ago and alcohol. Not whisky. Something sweeter than that. Rum with mixers, maybe.

‘I’m like a snake.’ Mrs Lindermilk stopped in the dark, breathing harshly. A faint light filtered from under a door ahead. ‘A fuckin’ snake.’

‘Sorry?’

‘Like a snake in an aquarium. They’d all come and peer at me if they could. Peer and point. The wankers. Only interested in making my life difficult. Now, you never made no appointment so you take me as you find me. OK?’

‘Fine.’

Ruth Lindermilk opened the door to reveal a large, dishevelled room. The french windows at the far end were hung with vertical blinds, but they stood slightly ajar and a small fan of sunlight came through, illuminating the crowded furniture: chairs, small tables and lumpy armchairs. Magazines, paperbacks and miniatures crammed the shelves – bad copies of Dresden shepherdesses, fat children in bonnets kissing, horses rearing, cats sleeping. Every piece of wall space was covered with framed photographs of different shapes and sizes. In the corner the TV flickered: QVC. A hefty blonde girl in hotpants was struggling to balance on a gym ball. Through the small gap in the blinds Flea could see the shiny eyepiece of the telescope on the patio outside.

‘That’s it. Feast your eyes. This is how I am and I ain’t making any apologies.’ Mrs Lindermilk pottered around, switching on lights, shooing cats off chairs. ‘Sit down. Sit down.’ She indicated a sofa at the other end of the room. Now Flea could see her better she saw she was stout. Dressed in white shorts and a pink polo shirt with an anchor insignia on the breast, she had short, muscular legs jammed into stiletto sandals, with narrow ankles and hardened calves like a man’s. Her thin hair under the jaunty cap was worn short and dyed an anaemic ochre red. ‘Push the cats off. Sit down or die standing. It’s your choice.’

Flea looked at the sofa. Two long-haired tabbies were curled among a pile of stuffed toys. Under them the leather was dry and split with a salty stain across it that looked like sweat or sea water. She moved the toys and sat next to the cats. One made a small grunt and wriggled closer into its partner. She felt the warmth against her leg and liked the comfort of it.

‘A drink? S’pose you want a drink?’

A black glass and chrome bar stood in the corner, coloured tumblers balanced on their rims, a gold ice bucket, mixers lined up. Flea took stock of the bottles of spirits at the back. ‘Yes.’ She put her cap on the arm of the chair. ‘I’ll have what you’re having.’

Mrs Lindermilk wiped her hands on her shirt and went to the bar. She upended two tumblers, put her hand on a bottle of Bacardi, stopped and gave Flea a sickly smile, as if to say, You almost caught me. Almost. Not quite . ‘Coke, then,’ she said. She got two cans from under the bar, snapped off the ring pulls and poured. Gave one to Flea.

‘Mrs Lindermilk-’

‘Ruth. You can call me Ruth, if you want.’

‘OK, Ruth. Is there a Mr Lindermilk?’

‘Was.’ She took her drink and settled into a worn recliner next to a rickety occasional table on which lay a remote control and an ashtray. Her bare legs in the heels were tanned, and sinewy, blackish clusters of spider veins dotted up and down them. ‘It’s just me and Stevie now.’

‘Your son?’

‘Yeah – that’s him.’ She nodded to the walls. Some of the framed photographs were of boats. One or two showed a much younger Ruth at the helm, wearing her jaunty cap next to a grey-haired man in a Hawaiian shirt. Another showed a younger man, in a white wife-beater and baseball cap with an anchor insignia, at the helm of a small boat, gazing straight into the camera. His hair was thick and blond, and he was very tanned, but there was something closed about his mouth that stopped him being good-looking. ‘Got his own business now. Doing well for himself, our Stevie.’

‘Ruth, the police came a few years back. You and one of the neighbours?’

‘How the hell do you know about that?’

‘We have access to that sort of thing.’

‘It wasn’t me who started it. Have you got access to that part? Eh?’

‘It didn’t say.’

‘Well, it was his fault. He was poisoning the squirrels. He knew my cats might eat the poison, knew it would wind me up. And it did. He got what was coming.’

‘You pulled a gun on him?’

‘A BB gun. Not exactly an AK47, is it?’

‘It’s still a gun. Could do a lot of harm.’

Ruth Lindermilk held up her hand. ‘No. You’re not going to discredit me. No effing way are you going to come in here without an appointment and try to discredit me .’

‘OK, OK.’ Flea kept her voice level. She wanted to look up at the telescope but she focused her eyes on Ruth. ‘I’m not trying to discredit you. I’m really not. I’m trying to build a picture of your situation.’

‘How much more of a picture do you want? You’ve got the letters I wrote you, haven’t you?’

‘Yes. I… Do you spend a lot of time watching the road?’

‘Most nights.’

‘What time do you go to bed?’

‘Late.’

‘When you say late?’

She shifted in her chair. ‘Are you here to help me or not?’ She raised her eyebrows challengingly. ‘Hmmm?’

Flea’s eyes went to the glass she was holding. Ruth Lindermilk was absently sloshing the Coke around in it with a circular motion. The way you would if there was booze in it. This was going to be uphill all the way. But the drink. She definitely had a drink problem. It might be useful for them. ‘Can I have a look through the camera?’ she asked. ‘The telescope?’

Lindermilk didn’t answer. She went on studying Flea thoughtfully. Her eyes went to the combats again. To the ID tucked inside her T-shirt.

‘Ruth? The camera?’

She smiled. ‘Of course you can have a look.’

She stood and opened the french windows. They stepped out into a day that had exploded into light. Sun was bouncing off the dew in the grass, the trees. One or two cats followed them, dropped on to the drying patio and lay blinking. Flea stood on tiptoe and squinted into the camera viewfinder. It was trained on the road below. Not on the site of the accident, but further up nearer where she’d left the car. She clicked the button on to ‘quick view’ and scrolled. There were only twenty or so photos, showing cats, a sunset, a badger eating cat food, all of which looked to have been taken in the back garden. There were no pictures of her just now, standing next to the Clio on the road.

Flea switched the camera back to photo mode, stepped sideways and put her eye to the telescope. It was trained on the road too.

‘Know how to use it?’ Ruth Lindermilk said.

‘Yes. The focus is here, right?’

‘It’s a good one. A nautical one. The neighbours hate me using it.’

Flea made a show of getting the adjustments right. She moved the telescope, letting it scan the hillside above the rapeseed field, down the track that went up the side, along the edge of the road. She moved it slightly to the right. Hit something pink.