Mo Hayder - Skin

She looked up. Ruth Lindermilk had walked a few paces on to the lawn and was standing with her hands on her hips, grinning at the telescope. There was a chipped tooth at the top of her mouth, next to the canine. ‘Get a good look?’

‘Yes.’

‘Notice anything?’

‘Just you. In the way.’

‘But anything special about me? Go on – tell me what you noticed.’

That you’re mad? That you’re an alcoholic? ‘What am I supposed to notice?’

‘That I’m not fuckin’ stupid.’ She came back to the telescope and pulled it away from Flea, snapping on the lens cover. ‘That’s what you’re supposed to notice.’

‘I’m just trying to do my job, Mrs Lindermilk.’

‘No, you’re not. You’re not trying to do your job because you’re not from the fuckin’ council . You’re not from the Highways Agency and not from the council, either.’

‘Of course I am.’

‘Do you think I was born yesterday? It’s them’s sent you, isn’t it?’ She turned, gesturing at the hamlet. ‘Neighbours ganging up on me, wanting to get a spy of my house. Go on – say it. Say, “Yes, they sent me.”’

‘I told you. I’m from the council.’

‘Well, if you are, you’re not from the department that wants to help me. You’re from bleedin’ environmental health, aren’t you?’

‘No.’

‘Then tell me about the letters I sent. When was the last one? What was the date?’

‘I handle several cases like this a week. I can’t remember exact dates.’

‘Then tell me what the letters are about.’

‘The road.’

‘ What about the road?’

Flea put her hands in her pockets, stood on tiptoe and looked at the horizon.

‘If you’re really from the council you’ll tell me why I’m interested in the road.’

Flea dropped back on to her heels, and turned her eyes to meet the other woman’s. ‘I don’t know,’ she admitted. ‘Just don’t know.’

‘Jesus fuckin’ wept.’

‘Tell me what you’ve seen down there. That’s what I want to know.’

Ruth Lindermilk grabbed the tripod, collapsed it, tucked the bits under her arm, took them to the french windows and put them inside the room. ‘Go on, get out of here. Want to see your hiney heading down that path right now.’

‘Just tell me what you’ve been watching.’

But Ruth Lindermilk had crossed over. ‘No. No fuckin’ way. Now get the hell out of here before I call the police.’

When Caffery woke, stiff and cold, to find the campsite deserted, just a mottled dead fire to prove the Walking Man had been there, the first thing that came into his head was Benjy: that damned dog of Lucy Mahoney’s. It had been in his dreams: a skinless dog in a body-bag on a vet’s table. The smell, and the shelled-egg stare of its eyes. Mallows said the Tanzanian brothers hated dogs: would-n’t go near them. In Africa the dog was often considered a pest. There was plenty in the literature about muti using parts from endangered species, but nothing about dogs. So, had it been kids who skinned the dog? Or Amos Chipeta? And, if it was Chipeta, then, why? As Caffery tinkered around, rolling up the mattress and sluicing his mouth out with water from a bottle, he decided he wanted to know more about what had happened the night of Lucy Mahoney’s suicide.

He called Wells police station and when he arrived an hour later the property clerk was already waiting for him, pen in hand for him to sign out item eight, three mortise keys and a Yale, from the detained-property register. Beatrice Foxton had pronounced Lucy Mahoney a suicide and so, technically speaking, all the personal effects from the post-mortem were under the auspices of the coroner’s office. But the clerk agreed no one would miss any of them for a few hours.

Lucy had lived in a new development on the edge of Westburysub-Mendip. Caffery drove past row upon row of brick-built starter flats and maisonettes, tiny front lawns, empty driveways that, by night, would fill with Mazdas and low-end Peugeots, because this was a place for workers, not families. Lucy’s was a downstairs maisonette. Two dustbins and a recycling wheelie with ‘32’ painted on it in white stood outside a little porch. As he put the key into the lock he could see through the pane the takeaway food circulars on the floor. Domino’s, Chilli’s Curry, the Thai House.

He glanced over his shoulders, then stepped inside, not switching on the light. He stood behind the door and pulled on blue plastic bootees, and a pair of nitrile gloves. He closed the door, opened the inner one and padded through.

The living room was dark and cluttered. Not what you’d expect when you were looking at the place from the outside. A new Dell LCD monitor, a scanner and a digital camera stood on a desk in the corner, but everything else was worn, a little battered. A threadbare Turkish rug on the floor, embroidered cushions scattered around, furniture painted with flowers and vines. Every surface was crammed with wood carvings, aromatherapy bottles, Nepalese painted papier-mâché, a faded sculpture of a wading bird that looked Asian. Tacked on to the living room was a little dining area and beyond that a kitchen with hand-painted tiles above the sink. The curtains were pulled back from the large window to show distant hills. Glastonbury Tor was out there – a little blip on the horizon.

He went around the few rooms, peering at things, trying to get a feel for the place. Lucy was the collecting type. Paperweights seemed to be her thing. Paperweights with flowers in them. Paperweights with volcano bursts of red and orange. Paperweights with tiny, almost translucent shells set at angles. The place was clean, though – cleaner than it had a right to be. Weird, he told himself, looking at the kitchen. Weirdly clean. Nothing to start a parade over – sometimes suicides spring-cleaned the place before downing the co-proxamol. Even so, this cleanliness felt odd, out of whack. Suddenly, out of nowhere, he remembered something Stuart Pearce the search adviser had said: Lucy Mahoney’s suicide had broken all the rules .

He went upstairs and switched on a light. Three doors opened on to the landing. One was a bathroom tiled in dark blue, a resin toilet seat embedded with seashells, and two pairs of thick striped tights hanging from the shower-curtain rail to dry. The dog team would have left those behind because there’d be no scent on them. They’d have gone instead for pyjamas, underwear: stuff taken out of the laundry basket. The second door was locked. He rattled it. It wasn’t moving. He went downstairs and ferreted through the drawers for keys, then checked the coat rack in the hallway. Nothing. He went back upstairs and lay on the landing carpet with his face close to the gap. Closed his mouth and breathed in the air coming from under the door.

Perfume. Perfume and joss-sticks. And something else. Turps, maybe. The room would have been unlocked by the search teams when they came through here looking for her when she first went missing. Someone must have come and locked it since. Lucy’s ex, maybe. He’d been listed as next of kin because her parents were dead.

The last door was the bedroom. Green velvet curtains, crystals and doeskin dream-catchers hung in the windows, and sequined belly-dance shawls had been draped over lamps – as if she’d had a lover recently. He went to the window and studied the photo in the frame on the sill: a little girl at a fête, wearing a wide-brimmed black straw hat, her arms around an old-fashioned rag doll. This would be Daisy, the daughter. The property clerk at Wells had said the Mahoneys had had a daughter – that she was staying somewhere near Gloucester with the ex-husband and mother-in-law.