Mo Hayder - Skin

‘Then, what the hell are you doing worrying about it?’

‘The time you gave me to tidy up the Norway problem? I want to spend it on this instead. I want to speak to the coroner.’

‘Oh, for fuck’s sake.’ Powers gave a deep sigh. Caffery could picture his face. He knew he’d be struggling not to climb down the phone line and chew him out for this. ‘Let me get this straight. You’re telling me you’ve dropped Norway and instead of coming back into the team on Kitson you’ve decided you’re off chasing another rabbit? I can’t believe I’m hearing this. I’m starting to think you’ve got something against the Kitson girl. It’s like you want to avoid the damned case. Like anything’s better than this. I can’t believe it.’

Caffery drummed his fingers on the table. ‘So? Is that a yes, then?’

‘Oh, brilliant. Very funny.’ He took some time, breathing carefully. Maybe he’d been to one of those alternative therapists to learn how to breathe his way through stress. ‘Look, if F District want to investigate this woman and her dog as something other than a suicide that’s their business. And if that happens, and if at the twenty-eight-day review they think it should come to us, then that’s the review team’s business. And I won’t argue with them. Because by then we’ll have found Misty Kitson and she’ll be safe and well and being photographed with her scum footie boyfriend and their horrible lapdogs in her kitchen in Chislehurst or Chingford or wherever it is these people come from. I’m sorry, Jack.’

‘Am I really that difficult?’

‘No. Just need you to pull with me. Pull with me.’

Misty’s case was so resource-heavy you could hear the cartwheels squealing. The force had thrown everything at it. Everything. Her phone records had come back in forty-eight hours. Lucy's had gone missing and no one had even noticed.

‘You know what?’ Caffery said. ‘You’re right. I’m going to get in early tomorrow and sit in with the HOLMES girls. Get up to speed with what’s going on. How about that?’

‘Yeah, well,’ Powers said gruffly.

‘I’ll help divvy up the day’s “Actions” for you, if you want. I can be there, let you have a lie-in.’

‘I’d settle for you telling me that when I get into the office in the morning my DI will be there. I don’t think that’s too much to ask.’

‘I will,’ Caffery said. ‘Have a good evening. Hope the rain stops for you.’

He hung up and stood for a minute, staring out at the butcher’s. It was starting to rain. He went to the desk and ran down the extension list, looking for Wells police station. He checked his watch. Six thirty. There was time. He was going to find out if the DI on the Lucy Mahoney case was still on duty, get all the witness statements from when she was a misper, take them home and read every one from cover to cover.

The Walking Man was right. This was his downfall. He just couldn’t let go.

All around the world scientists are growing skin. They’re using skin removed during cosmetic surgery, harvesting the cells and feeding them in a petri dish with agarose, glutamine, hydrocortisone and insulin. They add melanocytes to give pigment, dry off the top layer, and expose it to UV light to age it. Then they use it to test cosmetics, or sell it to order over the Internet to patch up burns and wounds.

The man has ordered some of this synthetic skin from its American manufacturers. It’s been shipped to him in injection-moulded polystyrene blocks: five flabby discs about the size of his palm, suspended in an agar nutrient medium and sealed in a high-grade polythene bag. As evening falls across the farmland that surrounds his lonely house he is examining the skin. He smells it, rests it on his hand and holds it up to the light. He screws his eyes shut and presses it to his face. Clenches his teeth and waits to feel better.

He’s been caught. Again.

Again .

‘Sssssssh.’ He rocks slightly. Lets the skin settle into the shape of his jaw. The problem is taken care of. He’s sure it’s taken care of. Nothing to get upset about. ‘Sssssssh.’

He pulls the artificial skin away from his face. Stares at it angrily. It has no hair, no pigment and none of the Langerhans cells that allow real skin to fight infection. It has no blood and no sweat glands. It’s no better than rabbit or dog skin. In disgust he flicks it off his fingers into the bin, where it hits the side and clings. He watches it and then, when it shows no sign that it will drop, he gets up and uses a long tanning awl to push it into the bottom.

Nothing, nothing , is fair in this world.

The gastro pub was at the top of a steep city road in Clifton. It had red-brick floors, squashy sofas, a Swedish wood stove, and racks of vintage wines behind glass. Caffery and Colin Mahoney ordered J20s, ‘sharing bread’ and a sandwich each. They sat in one of the huge bay windows where they could see office workers hurrying to lunch.

‘How’s Daisy?’ Caffery asked. ‘How’s she coping?’

‘How do you think she’s coping? There just isn’t the vocabulary.’

‘Have you told her about the dog? ‘

‘Thought I’d save that one.’ Mahoney was dressed in his grey suit, a white shirt and an old-fashioned Paisley tie. He looked tired. ‘No one’s been in touch since you came over yesterday. Haven’t heard a thing. Nothing. Not even a card or a bunch of flowers from the FLO.’

‘Those liaison officers. They’re just scared of commitment.’

‘I was at least expecting someone to call to tell me it had been reclassified. You know, as a murder.’

‘Yeah, well.’ Caffery patted his pocket, felt the tobacco wallet and thought about having to go outside to smoke. He’d been into the office this morning and gone through the day’s HOLMES ‘actions’ for Powers. As he’d promised. He was entitled to do what he wanted with his lunch-hour. ‘I’m working on that. I really am. I’ve spoken to the pathologist.’

‘And?’

‘She’s having problems reversing the suicide decision. Standing pretty firm on it. The only wobbly place is the temazepam. If she’s got any knot at all, it’s that. When Lucy died she was full of benzodiazepines.’

‘Her GP used to tell her she’d get addicted, that she should have a nice G-and-T instead. But she knew how to work him. Bathroom cupboard used to rattle with them. It scared me, with Daisy around. So? Am I going to get an answer? Are you treating it as a murder?’

‘Not officially. But, for the sake of argument, say you and I work on the assumption we are?’

‘Not an assumption for me. It’s a fact.’

‘Then we move on to whodunit territory. Like suspects and motives.’

Mahoney held out his hands to show he was clueless.

‘We think someone used that missing key to come into her house. Maybe after it happened, right? To clean up. Or was there something else they wanted? You’ve checked nothing’s missing?’

‘Nothing, as far as I can tell. Only the Stanley knife and the key.’

‘Whoever’s got it could still come in and out.’

‘No, they couldn’t. I’ve changed the lock. I did it myself, this morning.’

For starters came Haloumi bread, warm and shiny with oil, lumps of cheese and caraway seeds pressing up through the crust like tiny black veins. The men ate, looking out at the suspension bridge. The sun glinted on the chocolaty river below.

‘I spent the night reading the witness statements from when she was a misper,’ Caffery said. ‘Talk to me a bit more about how it happened. She went missing at five thirty on the Sunday?’

‘That was the last time I saw her.’

‘And you called the police on the Monday?’