Mo Hayder - Skin

‘A suicide. Or, rather, a death that’s supposed to look like suicide. Come on.’

Tipping two gum lozenges into his mouth Caffery followed her into the room. The woman lying on the block in life had been plump, with pale skin and fair pubic hair. She had a tattoo of a swallow on her right breast, but her face and hair weren’t visible. A second mortician stood at her head and was using both gloved hands to peel her face gently up and over the skull. Beatrice would have made an incision at the back of the skull and pulled the skin and hair down over the front of the head, letting it gather in folds under the chin. Now the autopsy was over it was Lurch’s job to peel it back up, flatten it and make it presentable for the relatives. Beyond him a man wearing a navy blue raincoat stood with his side to them, a mobile glued to his ear. A divisional DI, Caffery guessed.

‘She’s not long dead?’ Caffery walked around the table, studying the body, the dark stitching burrowing deep into her flesh. The Y cut had circumvented the navel so it was attached to the left flap of stomach wall – Lurch stitched the little lump of gristle back to the opposite flap of skin. ‘Not in rigor yet.’

‘We think it probably happened yesterday evening some time before midnight. Her name’s Susan Hopkins.’

Beatrice put her hand out to the CSI man, who passed her a sheaf of photos. She gave them to Caffery. They showed Susan Hopkins in belted jeans and a black-and-white floral-print blouse, lying on the floor of a garage, a dark pool of blood around her. She was young, quite pretty, with a flat face and a small nose. Her blonde hair was worn short. Neat, not showy.

‘She was a nurse in a private clinic out near Yate. She’d done an early shift and was supposed to be meeting her friend at seven for a drink – they were going to celebrate because her boyfriend was coming off the rigs in Aberdeen after three weeks apart. She never showed for the drink. The police found her this morning at three in her own garage. No sexual assault, no underwear disturbed. No robbery. The parents – poor bastards – are on holiday in Croatia. Someone’s trying to find them now.’

‘And you’re not convinced she pulled the plug because…?’

Beatrice glanced at the DI to make sure he wasn’t listening. ‘She was lying down,’ she murmured. ‘On her back. Just as you see her now. The same way Mahoney was.’

‘And?’

‘Most suicides are in a sitting position. Or half propped up. You never seen that? If they arrive when they’re still in rigor it’s like trying to fit a chair on the table – legs sticking out everywhere. But no. I don’t break bones to get them to lie flat in case that’s what you’ve heard. I have other methods.’

‘So she lay down to die. That’s suspicious?’

‘All right, all right.’ Beatrice sighed. ‘Give an old lady a chance here. Of course if a suicide comes to me lying flat on their back, hands at their sides, it means nothing. It’s a little unusual, that’s all. But you add it to the big picture and… I don’t know. Maybe I’m just getting bored out here in the wilderness with the woollies. Looking for murder on every corner, eh?’

She lifted Susan’s right hand and showed Jack the inside of her wrist. It was a clumsy cut, made in the same longitudinal direction as Mahoney’s had been.

‘No experimental nicks?’

‘Just like Mahoney. They both went straight in there for the biggie. Same as the lying-down thing. You take it in isolation and it means nothing. But there are other things.’

‘What other things?’

‘She did it the same way Mahoney did. Benzos and the knife. And, just like with Mahoney, the temazepam is only half digested.’

‘Where does this leave us, then?’

Beatrice rubbed her forehead with the tip of her finger. ‘You tell me. Lucy Mahoney had temazepam on prescription for an operation, but Hopkins…’ She looked up at him. ‘So far no one can work out how she got her hands on those tablets.’

Caffery peered at the cut on Hopkins ’s wrist. He could see past the skin right down into the mechanics of the arm: the duncoloured tendons, the slippery fascia of muscle. ‘I don’t know. Feels a little like you’re stretching it a bit.’

Beatrice pushed a stray strand of grey hair off her forehead and gave an exasperated sigh. ‘You know, I didn’t expect you to propose marriage to me over this, but I have to say I’d hoped for a different reaction, Jack. I’d kind of hoped for some sort of appreciation. Even just a nod. A smile that I bothered to call you, maybe.’

Caffery glanced across at the DI, who hadn’t looked up and was still muttering into the phone, one finger in his ear to block out the roar of the air-conditioning unit. ‘It’s just that if you’re right ,’ he muttered, leaning into her, ‘then all I can say is, God help me.’

‘And all I can say is, I hear the clink and clank of God ponying up right now – because I am right. You just haven’t heard everything yet.’

Caffery turned his eyes sideways and held hers.

‘Yes,’ she murmured, her eyebrows raised. ‘Oh, yes.’

She gestured to Fester and Lurch. Like Mahoney, Hopkins had been a big girl – it took two of them to roll her over. And when they did Caffery stopped chewing the gum. He stood quite still, his hands in his pockets.

‘See what I mean?’ Beatrice said. ‘Do you see why I don’t think she killed herself?’

On the backs of Hopkins ’s heels an area of skin had been sloughed away. Little pinpoints of black showed gravel embedded in the grazes.

‘She was dragged? You’re telling me she was dragged into the garage?’

Beatrice gave a low, humourless laugh. ‘At last,’ she murmured. ‘At last we’re reading from the same hymn sheet.’

Flea parked in the shaded trees, just out of sight of the road, and walked up the path to Ruth Lindermilk’s bungalow. The heat of the day was just leaving the air. The hamlet was quiet, the only sound a dog barking furiously inside one of the cottages. Flea didn’t go up the path to the door. She opened the gate and went around the side of the building to where the land dropped away sharply towards the road.

Ruth was about ten feet away, her back turned. Hatless, dressed in a short white skirt and a denim jacket, she was busy dropping birdseed into one of the feeders.

‘Hello.’

Ruth looked round, saw Flea, put the seed on the ground and began walking towards the house.

‘Ruth – please.’

‘Eff off. I’m going to get my gun.’

‘You haven’t got a gun. The police took it.’

‘Got another one. Going to get it.’

‘Christ, Ruth, this isn’t The Beverly shagging Hillbillies .’

She stopped in her tracks and turned slowly to Flea. Without the cap she seemed older. Her badly dyed hair was cut short and greying at the back. Her makeup was caked in the corners of her eyes. She was sweating, breathing hard. ‘You’ve got some fuckin’ neck, showing your face round here.’

‘I’m sorry about last time, but the neighbours didn’t send me. You should at least believe that.’

Ruth shook her head. ‘Then who are you? With your combats and your hat. Hasn’t no one never told you those are boys’ clothes? You look a right wanker.’

‘I’m a private investigator.’

‘A private…? How comes you told me you were from the Highways Agency?’

‘It was the first thing that came to mind.’

‘I should’ve known you weren’t from the council straight away. Council’d never come out to see me. Now, if I was on the social it’d be different – if I was on the soash they’d have been straight round…’ She trailed off. ‘A private investigator? What do you want out of me?’